10 July 2012

My Nokia Blog

My Nokia Blog

Lumiappaday #237: Function Plotter demoed on the Nokia Lumia 900

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 03:04 PM PDT

 For those that may have a need to plot some mathematical graphs, this app may come in handy to you. I wish I had this at A-Level (and I probably would be able to tell you more about this, alas I’ve forgotten). I guess my calculator did have it but it was a pain to use. This is just a case of inserting your function and your graph is done.

It’s a very well made app for what it does.

#237) Function Plotter 

Price:  Free

Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/491f6fea-f79c-e011-986b-78e7d1fa76f8

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArBf69JD97Y

Developer Blurb:

 

This app is a function plotter for your phone.

You can easily enter a function with a special keyboard and then the app will plot the graph and show you the basic results of a curve sketching. I want to create a small and clear app which gives you a fast overview of the function.

New in version 2.2:
- The app can now also calculate the poles and the removable singularities for a lot of functions.
- With additional options you can activate the drawing of poles, removable singularities and axis labels in the graph.

Have fun.

Rating:

Design: 9

Usability: 9

Performance: 9 

Price: 10

Editorial: How Important is the N9?

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 02:55 PM PDT

Bear with me guys, this is a random post that really has no objective except to get my ideas out infront of me, unfortunately you might have to suffer through them. Skipping through the anecdote of what brought this on the other day I was in “Jarir” the largest Bookstore/Electronics place in Saudi Arabia; who very recently have gotten an exclusive stock of the 808 Pureview (for a very reasonable 2000SAR = 530 USD which actually got me to buy one- but that’s another story). What interested me though was the fact that the display panel in the center of the electronics area (where you would usually spot the high end phones/latest phones) had the iPhone 4s, Samsung Galaxy S3, Nokia 808 and surprise surprise the Nokia N9. The N9 is almost a year old now and is by no means “new”, Nokia have released well over 10 phones after it in the past year- and some of those are pretty good phones, so why did the N9 have the same price-tag as the brand-new 808 (yes also 530 USD)?

That’s when I realized that “latest” doesn’t necessarily mean “new” at least not in this case, for all intents and purposes the N9 IS Nokias flagship phone in the Middle East, Gulf, North Africa and everywhere else where Lumias aren’t available- till now any Nokia store in the region has the N9 front and center on the show room, with swipe posters all up on the walls.

As I was playing around on the 808 a random customer next to me spoke up and said “Nokia can never be anything anymore, now it’s all about Samsung and iPhone” (ironically he was buying a blackberry- but that’s besides the point). I felt like responding, proving him wrong but what could I say? what was there to prove that there are still some great devices being made? (this is not a cue for a flame-war, satisfaction rates on lumias prove that they are “loved” = “great”). For all intents and purposes Nokia had abandoned the area for the past year or so, dropping the N9 and disappearing, with no answer to the hordes of customers who bailed on Symbian and went to Droids and iPhones; the N9 is a great device, and has done it’s bit keeping Nokias name out here, but no single device can withstand the continuous onslaught of android phones pumped out, nor the monstrous iOS app store; let alone a single device that has been abandoned by its manufacturers.

In some countries (mostly Dubai/UAE) out of what seems to be sheer desperation the Lumia 800 was launched on a slightly smaller scale, being available but without the large advertisements and campaigns, but who in their right mind would by a device that doesn’t support his native language? If anything prematurely launched software will do alot more harm than good, no matter how many units are sold the word of mouth will be “that phone- HAH! it doesn’t even support Arabic” even after WP8 brings it’s unicode Arabic/Hindi/Hieroglyphics support; reputations aren’t easy to shed just take a look at what the original S^3 did to the whole Symbian name.

Back to the main idea, it fell upon the N9 to represent Nokia in its leave of absence in these areas, but imagine if once Meego was scrapped the N9 was never released; could Nokia really have survived without a “gap device” something to keep people hooked until WPs were ready? Any way you look at it the N9 was a vital piece for Nokia no matter how many were sold (especially since after a whole year they’re still going for 500 USD); and by the way things are going it will remain the “Flagship” until October/September or whenever WP8 is coming, the question is can Nokia really risk going any longer without proper dedication to these markets?

Go ahead and share your thoughts guy, but as always be polite and considerate (thank you).

*Side Note: Are the N9s still in production? I can’t imagine all of what’s being sold is just the end of stock clearance, anybody have any clues about that?

MNB RG: Jolla established by Nokia’s bridge project

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 12:08 PM PDT

Earlier today we had a post covering some info about Jolla Mobile. There was a video interview with Jolla’s CEO which Muerte translates below.

 

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/07/09/jollas-meego-based-phone-with-new-ui-coming-this-year/comment-page-2/#comment-612431

 

  • - Jolla was established by Nokia's bridge project (most likely IPR transfered as well)
  • - Fruitful co-operation in both ways (Jolla-Nokia)
  • - They are an independent company
  • - They are here to create something new in terms of user experience and technology. Something significant. They want to be the leaders, not followers.
  • - Devices coming this year (they will announce only things that they can deliver)
  • - Production in Asia (most likely, doesn't reveal who are the partners) via ODM partners.
  • - Surprised by the massive global interest after saturday
  • - Thankful to Nokia
  • - They aim to be truly big in the next few years (as he sees that in ten years this industry is so different/it doesn't exist in the way it is today, nobody can forecast the change)
  • - They are not trying to be "the new Nokia"

Janne said:

Jolla was established in Nokia’s Bridge program and the guys at Jolla are very thankful to Nokia for it. For those that don’t know, the Bridge program is a Nokia sponsored entrepreneurship program that aims to encouraging and helping people leaving Nokia to build a business for themselves. Nokia also has a long history of sponsoring entrepreneurship around products and projects that they themselves are not going to continue, apparently now MeeGo falling under this category as well.

This is surprisingly impressive social responsibility from Nokia and the management that thus far has been claimed to be on a killing spree of all things non-Microsoft. Apparently Nokia have now, through this program, actually sponsored the MeeGo spin-off at Jolla.

Kudos to both Nokia and Jolla for this impressive feat!

Cheers Janne for the tip and Muerte for the translation!

 

Video: Nokia 808 PureView Sample from 4D Projection event

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 10:02 AM PDT

Here’s a video of a 3D/4D projection related to the 808 in that it was the device filming. Now we’ve seen plenty of such videos before but because Nokia is the topic. Here it’s not about Nokia (I didn’t pay attention to what it was, btw in the screenshot it’s supposed to say World Harmony, not World Harm) but listen out for the audio and watch the video. The sound is so crisp!

I think that’s the best recording of one of these events that I’ve seen. Anyone know what the music is? It’s quite calming. Reminds me a bit of the end scenes for Tekken Tag Tournament.

by 

Thanks Amir for the tip!

Video: Nokia 808 PureView vs. HTC One X test video

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 09:46 AM PDT

It’s not like we need any more comparisons of the Nokia 808 PureView against other camera phones. I guess it’s useful for the competing camera phones to see how good theirs is in comparison to the new standard.

Immediately noticeable is the wider angle in the 808 and also, oddly, the 808 is the one with the warmer colours. Also is it me or is the one X’s video quite jittery/poor stabilisation?

The stark difference in the audio is amazing. Seems like the HTC is still recording sound with potato microphones. Listen to how rich the 808′s sound is with Rich Recording. Also notice how the sound of the cars moving left to right and so forth is replicated with properly placed stereo microphones (vs mono or N8 like stereo).

Wow 1080p on the OneX seems quite amateur hour here but vastly improved over their potato film days. It’s a great thing that the OneX has many other things going for it (like that N9eqsue monoblock of polycarbonate and curvy screens :p).

by 

More Lumia exclusives as Nokia partners with Baby Genius

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 09:36 AM PDT

 

All I’ve known of Baby Genius is a similarly named comedy from 1999. However Baby Genius is a company focused on creating clever kids through CD’s, DVDs and apps that provide a healthy, creative and fun way to learn together. Yes together. It’s not just for kids but for the parents too. Their way of learning is focused around music and how this can enhance brain development as well as increased language, memory, coordination and social skills.

Nokia have partnered with Baby Genius to deliver their ‘award winning’  products exclusively to Lumia.

Klaus Moller, CEO of Baby Genius said:

We are extremely excited to work with Nokia as their content partner for its Windows Phone platforms and look forward to a long and successful relationship between our companies as we produce a series of Baby Genius content for Windows Phone. We believe this content is well suited for other Windows platforms so that children and families can enjoy Baby Genius educational content on multiple devices"

I hope that with all this effort and support for WP that it pays off for Nokia, and the likes of Samsung/HTC don’t just swoop in when it may become ripe for picking.

Source: Street Insider via WPCentral

Cheers Janne for the tip

Closer Look at Nokia Reading #NokiaEntertainment

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 07:28 AM PDT

Time for round two of #NokiaEntertainment (last time was Nokia TV)- today a demo of Nokia Reading, which provides a built in ereader for books on your Lumia as well as a store to purchase the books from directly. The app itself is very well built, with a decent amount of flexibility and most importantly loads of books. The size and clarity of the Lumia 900s screen makes it the perfect device for Nokia reading for me, personally I love “pre-bedtime reading” wich is why I prefer a backlit ereader in this case as I don’t need the lights to be on.

Magenta Lumia 900 Now Official- Available Through At&t Starting July 15th

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 07:01 AM PDT

Pink 900 Front

Well we thought this was coming a while back on mothers day, but that was just a pink case; however this is the real deal; for those of you who want a splash of pink in their lives- the magenta Lumia 900.

Today, we're proud to announce the addition of a stunning new color that's sure to make you stand out from the crowd. The Nokia Lumia 900 will soon be available in the US from AT&T in a beautiful pink color.

As Nokia are quick to remind us this is NOT a cover, or a coat of paint; but pure magenta polycarbonate through and through (good to know); you can pick one up at any at&t store come July 15th or you can preorder online if you wish @ att.com

Starting Sunday, July 15th, you can go to your AT&T Store in the US and order the pink Lumia 900 to be delivered via direct fulfillment, or visit ATT.com to pre-order your pink phone.

Side Note: Releasing a new color seems to be a nice thing to do now until we get WP8, consider this a filler device; something to keep things interesting without putting too mush effort into it, at least it’s a lot more reasonable than releasing a whole new phone as we’ve heard rumors that the Lumia 910 might be another WP7.5 device; which honestly would be kind of stupid at this time.

 

SOURCE

Jolla’s MeeGo based phone with new UI coming this year

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 02:32 AM PDT

 

Joni and Jiipee from Finland have some interesting news on Jolla, the future direction of Maemo/MeeGo outside of Nokia, from Finnish media. I can’t wait to see Jolla Mobile’s products.  This feels much more of a truer direction, what with actual use of MeeGo and ex Nokia staff on board, as opposed to Tizen which has as much MeeGo spirit in it as my bagel.

Joni got this from today’s Aamulehti which is apparently not online.

  • - at the moment near 50 employees. At end of this year 100 employees.
  • - offices in Helsinki and Tampere
  • - manufacturing: 3 big international partners and finnish subcontractors too.
  • - first products this year
  • - aims at the ‘big game’. It is difficult to be a small company in telecom industry.
  • - Jolla-phone: user uses the device and not vice versa. They’ll be making their own UI
  • - CEO Jussi Hurmola worked 12 years at Nokia. Last years with N9
  • - Hurmola’s interpretation: Nokia has taken Jolla-project nicely
  • - He thanks Nokia for being serious and sincere ( or frank) regarding the project.

Cross referencing with Jiipee’s info from TV4

  • – They were suprised on the amount of interest
  • – They have approx 50 employees at the moment: engineers, devs, designers, marketing professionals, more than 50% are former Nokians. All dedicated to open source development
  • – Nokia knows what they are doing – they have been very open on it! (could this mean no IP wars to be expected). He has been working for Nokia for 12 years and says that Nokia is superb company (clearly no hard feelings)
  • - They had other alternatives such as Android, but chose Meego because they can be on the drivers seat. With Meego they will be able to integrate different parts to a full UX instead of separate apps
  • - the phone will be released this year

Watch here: http://ismobilea.thirdpresence.com/dls/t/watch.jsp?org=1&iid=724698

Cheers Joni and Jiipee for the tip!

Richard Kerris on Nokia’s future, “people will be climbing over themselves” for the new Nokia products.

Posted: 09 Jul 2012 02:18 AM PDT

 

The name Richard Kerris may or may not be familiar to you. I had to jog my memory a bit by doing some searching. He became Nokia’s VP, Global Head of Developer Relation last November and was interviewed by Engadget’s Myriam Joire back in May. His name is now hitting some headlines again for saying some bold and hopeful things about Nokia. Now, of course he would say that right, he’s working at Nokia.

Or perhaps there are actual valid reasons to be very positive about Nokia’s outlook? Let’s take a look  at a couple of sources for some snippets into Nokia’s future

 http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/08/nokias-richard-kerris-people-wont-remember-our-troubles-by-next-spring/

http://www.neowin.net/news/interview-nokias-richard-kerris-on-windows-phone-8-verizon-and-so-much-more?

Starting with TechCrunch, they’ve titled their article, “People Won't Remember Our Troubles By Next Spring”.

 http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/08/nokias-richard-kerris-people-wont-remember-our-troubles-by-next-spring/

That is quite a bold statement to stay, and can be read as Nokia bringing out something so amazing you will forget about their past difficulties. Given the everest of trouble Nokia’s had since 2007, that’s raising my expectations so high, the anticlimax will be unbearable should it be another Nokia dud.

For the eternal pessimist, you could say that people won’t remember Nokia’s troubles because they won’t care. there won’t be a Nokia to care about. Kerris says however that Nokia will come out of all of this STRONGER than ever before.

I wasn’t aware of Kerris’ full background before Nokia but here’s a summary:

  • worked at Apple under Steve Jobs
  • CTO of Lucas Films
  • Worked at HP on WebOS

The Neowin article actually recommended that you looked at his profile, saying that ‘he is not one to take a job simply because it was offered’. Well that makes me hopeful about his continued presence at Nokia.

Apparently, Kerris was not too enthusiastic about Elop joining the company but changed his mind after seeing prototypes of Lumias that he thought rivalled Apple product’s build. He accepted that the Nokia he joined had gone through years of arrogance and neglected market opportunities. There’s a sense of realism or perhaps worry when Kerris says that the Sunnyvale office now feels like a start up – perhaps meaning exciting future ahead though very much worried if they’re be there in the long run? In fact, he apparently said that even if it didn’t work out for Nokia in the long run, “at least we'll have fun and go down trying”. Well at least he’s honest there.

Neowin also concurs with Kerris’ honesty on the Nokia situation and is NOT obvlivious to the problems around them (unlike, perhaps say RIM who denied of being in trouble or in a ‘Death Spiral’). Their article has a few more specific and encouraging tidbits.

http://www.neowin.net/news/interview-nokias-richard-kerris-on-windows-phone-8-verizon-and-so-much-more?

  • Confirmation once again of a Verizon Lumia but with a time frame that ‘it won’t be very long’
  • Currently Nokia’s ‘dark days’ but can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
  • PureView Lumia very soon (Nokia is yet to prove that they understand what SOON means, very soon could be just as far away)
  •  WP7 apparently not dead,  with 7.8 and other ‘enhancements’ on the way it’s as vibrant as ever
  • He feels developers will first want to target the ‘millions’ of Lumia owners, making apps compatible for WP8 but also for the current install base. Well, it makes sense as there is no install base of WP8 owners.
  • Nokia filed more patents last year than any other and will aggressively defend their ‘new technologies’
  • Reiteration of R&D work on the flexible bendy screen (when will we ever see a practical use for that from Nokia, huh?)
  • Location aware devices, knowing what profiles/settings to switch to when you’re at work/home etc. I’m sure I had an app on my 7610 that did this, and also on my N97/N8?
  • Building on that last point however is the device instinctively knowing if a child is holding the device and locking out certain features.
  • Nokia will ‘innovate its way out of the current situation’ and the change will continue in fall.
  • Supposedly, “people will be climbing over themselves” for the new Nokia products.

So…change will continue in fall and then something else for Spring? Is this Lumia PureView for Spring time? Urgh. Though that was the expected time frame, I feel that’s unfortunately just too late for Nokia. Much, much too late. They better have something killer this year to rival HTC OneX/SGSIII WP version (and the original Droids themselves).

I was looking for a thumbnail for this article and saw some tweets from Richard himself.

He doesn’t confirm what carriers will get he new Lumias as it’s not his area but confirms (Lumia??) PureView

well, to be clear, I didn’t say that about the carriers; not my area. But we have said PureView is coming and its great.

[in response to a title: Nokia Windows Phones coming to Verizon and Sprint, Lumia PureView camera 'very soon']

https://twitter.com/richardkerris/status/222127052533411840

His response?

yeah, fact checking seems to be a lost art these days. Gotta love the enthusiasm though ;)

Hmmm….

Cheers Joni, Jules and Prashant for the tip!
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