My Nokia Blog |
- China Mobile, Largest carrier in China (and the World) scores the Nokia Lumia 920
- More D.I.Y. Nokia Lumia 920 – 3D Printed!
- Win a Nokia Lumia 920 – submit your switch and win!
- I made my own Nokia Lumia 920 last night :p lol (Shot on Nokia 808 PureView)
- Anssi Vanjoki trades tweets with Jo Harlow on Nokia Lumia 920/N9/808 being the world’s most innovative smartphone.
- N8 Belle Refresh Calendar Update?
- Quick Comparison: Nokia Lumia 920 vs iPhone 5 vs SGS III vs One X vs Droid RAZR MAXX HD
- Video: Nokia Lumia 920 vs Samsung Galaxy S3 size comparison.
- Lumia 920 and 820 Launch Party: New York
| China Mobile, Largest carrier in China (and the World) scores the Nokia Lumia 920 Posted: 13 Sep 2012 04:39 PM PDT
Chees Viipottaja for the tip.
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| More D.I.Y. Nokia Lumia 920 – 3D Printed! Posted: 13 Sep 2012 04:34 PM PDT
The Nokia Lumia 920 is hot stuff. So hot that fans are making their own Nokia Lumia 920 in anticipation :p (see Plasticine 920) This one is much more accurate – it’s a 3D printed Nokia Lumia 920.
Click on the link below to read about the process: This project was shared with us by Janne Pihlajamäki from miniFactory.Fi. Cheers Janne!
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| Win a Nokia Lumia 920 – submit your switch and win! Posted: 13 Sep 2012 02:35 AM PDT
Nokia’s holding a competition to win a Nokia Lumia 920 over at their facebook page. There are 5 Nokia Lumia 920s to be won and the closing date for this is Friday, 21 Sep 2012 0:00 BST. What do you have to do?
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| I made my own Nokia Lumia 920 last night :p lol (Shot on Nokia 808 PureView) Posted: 13 Sep 2012 02:28 AM PDT
Playdough/plasticine cat. The above is a macro shot taken by the Nokia 808 PureView. I had a pot of plasticine right next to me last night as I was trying to read up a handbook/manual thing for next week. Distraction by the plasticine cat meant a break and I thought I’d make my own Nokia Lumia 920 using the case I received from Nokia Connects yesterday.
Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to do it around midnight as the result looks like a child had made it. After smoothing out the bezel, I got sleepy but decided I will finish this regardless of what it will look like.
The tiles are actually solid blocks of colour. We’ve got some yellow for the flash at the back and white for the metal panel.
It would have been easier if I only bothered colouring in the top layer, no? I had the mindset of ‘what if this was a cake? Layers of colour would look great!” ha. Darn Great British Bake off show.
The polycarbonate material makes it easy to just take out the plasticine and leave the shell as if it had never been touched. I think I’ll leave mine in for now. Still more innovative than an iPhone 5. :p :p :p These pictures are all by the Nokia 808 PureView.
– In case you’re wondering why I have plasticine/clay/playdough – we were going to use it to make anatomical models.
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| Posted: 13 Sep 2012 01:54 AM PDT  RT by Siraj When Nokia called the Nokia Lumia 920 the world’s most innovative smartphone, I was very unsure about that comment. But looking at the previous post comparing the top devices currently available, in many ways, Nokia is very right.
It’s not simply about having more numbers. BTW, as much as people accuse PureView in 808 as being just that, no it isn’t. They all eat their words when they see it in action. Nokia first and foremost (and sadly for some) don’t enter the specs game haphazardly. They put stuff in because it benefits their users (e.g. again, 41mp sensor for PUREVIEW type 1) and not simply because more numbers will attract. Last night, Jo Harlow tweeted,
Anssi Vanjoki jabbed back:
Credit where credit is due, N9 is super innovative in many ways. The design and the Swipe UI are remarkable. 808 was the device Vanjoki hinted at years before as that DSLR like Nokia. And heck, we’ve seen comparisons by third parties to say Nokia’s done an excellent job on that. The 920 also has great innovative features of its own. It’s not fighting in the numbers game. It’s fighting in features that actually will be useful for the end user. Either way, all three are Nokia devices. We can only hope that Microsoft speed up to show us the much anticipated software side of consumer features. BTW I think they should be banned from showing resizing of live tiles for more than 5 seconds. BTW, I found this funny image RT’d by Nitish Murphy. Just a playful jab.
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| N8 Belle Refresh Calendar Update? Posted: 13 Sep 2012 01:22 AM PDT
Carlos from Ecuador emailed over these screenshots showing an update for the calendar app on a Nokia N8 with Belle Refresh. Apparently it brings better calendar event management and fixes some problems.
Cheers Carlos for the tip!
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| Quick Comparison: Nokia Lumia 920 vs iPhone 5 vs SGS III vs One X vs Droid RAZR MAXX HD Posted: 13 Sep 2012 01:11 AM PDT
@Panhead93/Keith Francis tweeted this picture to us above (not sure where it’s from) but it compares the Nokia Lumia 920 against the new iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, One X, SGS III and the ridiculously named Droid RAZR MAXX HD. It’s interesting to note that Nokia could mention in future that their 920 has a higher resolution that the new iPhone and is a better retina display by having more pixels per inch (332ppi vs 326)! I’m surprised everyone is at 8MP. LG is supposedly trying to up the game and apparently made claims of having the most pixels in a phone (13MP…erm ok). We can also add wireless charging, PureView, Super Sensitive screen and PureMotion HD+ in the mix. To be fair, Nokia is right in calling it the most innovative. These are things that actually help your user experience with the device. Improved quality experience not simply “oh it has more numbers”. On the processor side this must be a North American version as the SGSIII and OneX do come in quadcore flavours. For SGSIII, Quadcore means loss of LTE and 1GB RAM. Looking at videos, performance is comparable (LTE would probably make up for eating battery in dualcore). Comparisons versus WP8 devices in performance is yet to be established. It was already an accomplishment for single core lumias to be smoother than OneX in various operations. Looking at this, the Nokia Lumia 920 doesn’t stack up too badly at all. The possibly only niggles is weight. Source: (TBC)
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| Video: Nokia Lumia 920 vs Samsung Galaxy S3 size comparison. Posted: 13 Sep 2012 12:56 AM PDT
This video shows a size comparison between the Nokia Lumia 920 and the SGSIII from Sammy. You can see the SGSIII is just slightly taller, both pretty much identical in width. SGSIII is slightly slimmer. If you didn’t see the buttons and the logo, it would seem that there is a spectacular use of space from Nokia. But no, that’s a nice space eating bezel, especially at the bottom (we’ll say it’s because innovation takes a bit of space :p :p)
Cheers Jill!
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| Lumia 920 and 820 Launch Party: New York Posted: 12 Sep 2012 11:05 PM PDT
It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, much less written anything for public consumption but I felt like last week’s events needed a bit of first person perspective.
Last Wednesday evening, (New York time of course), Nokia held a launch party/general access and admissions event for their newly announced Lumia series devices. Held in what is probably best described as a 5 storey art gallery, the ambiance of the event was quite frankly top notch. Getting to and eventually into the event was a rather trouble free experience and provided a quite telling surprise, there was actually a line to get in! Sure, Windows Phone has been growing steadily in popularity over the past few months, undoubtedly exacerbated by the first round of Nokia hardware, but to see a line for a Nokia and Microsoft joint event about mobiles was rather interesting to say the least.
Walking out of the elevators into the main room was a busy showfloor with close to 30 Nokia employees showing off the latest and greatest features of the new devices and some of the accessories that will be available when the 920 and 820 officially launch sometime in “Q4″ of this year. I pressed multiple employees for a more specific timepoint, including Microsoft employees concerning the full rollout of Windows Phone 8 and got naff, though from all indications, it’s less a matter of software readiness and more of carrier support, developer support and avoiding a failed launch (whether this is such a launch remains to be seen).
The partners that Nokia mentioned during the morning’s keynote, “The Coffee Been & Tea Leaf” and ”Virgin Atlantic” both were well represented with their own large swathes of the gallery and an abundance of wireless chargers of both styles and many colours. More impressive to me was Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’s integration of the charging stations into their table surfaces, with the only indication being a pattern of landing lights on the table. If more widespread adoption of wireless charging is to occur, partnerships like this are going to be an absolute necessity. Of course, much hinges on the success of Nokia and Microsoft, but that’s a conversation for another day. The Hardware:
On first glimpse, you’d be forgiven for thinking the 920 was a Lumia 900 given the reuse of the polycarbonate unibody design that has become so iconic and so Nokia. That said, upon closer inspection, the modifications make become much, much more pronounced. Many complained when Apple reused the iPhone 4′s design with the more recent 4S and rightfully so, nobody wants their brand new devices to look exactly like the old devices, as a result Nokia may come in for rather harsh criticism on that front even if there are obvious differences to the observant eye. In any case, let’s start with the dimensions. On paper the 920 comes in at 2.5mm longer, 1.3mm wider and just a hair’s breadth under 1mm thinner than it’s predecessor. What does all that mean? Quite frankly, nothing. Even with the addition of a larger screen and all manner of gizmos under the hood, the 920 looks and feels virtually identical in terms of footprint to the 900.  Family Portrait Note the use of the word virtually, as the modifications made to the screen curvature, mildly altered body shape and the movement of the capacitive buttons all went together well to improve the ergonomics and weighting of the device. I’m sure I’m not alone in having the experience of nearly dropping my device altogether because of hardware keys being much too close to the bottom of the device in order to accomodate much larger screens. As a result I believe that the placing of the keys on the Lumia 920 is for the best, bezel-haters be damned. The rest of the device shows similar precedence of function over “perceived aesthetics”, with the back of the device curving even more noticeably than before, thus adding to the thickness of the device while fitting the hand even more than it’s visual “size” would lend itself to.
There have been a number of complaints about the changes from a matte finish to a glossy finish on the Lumia 920 and I’ll be happy to allay those right now. On the Yellow and Red devices, anything other than a glossy finish would be less than pleasing on the eye and in any case, the black and grey variants have been spared. Sadly there was not even a whiff of cyan among the Nokia or Microsoft employees. That said, don’t be surprised if you happen to see a Surface and Cyan Lumia 920 bundle in time for Christmas.
The display is the second most noticeable change on the device. The 4.5 inch 1280×768 pixel IPS display really does live up to the hype, even when not in motion. Sharp, vivid are quite honestly not enough to describe my impressions of the display. As I’m currently running a Galaxy Nexus next to my Lumia 900 I can quite honestly say that the Lumia 920′s display is a fair distance above the competition and even more so above the Lumia 900′s which while only 800×480 pixels, was not as bad as it’s resolution would suggest. Did I mention that it’s qualifies as a “retina display” in Apple parlance? All jokes aside though, it was much better in person than I’d imagined and it works just as well without gloves, something I’ll invariably appreciate come winter.
With my previous excursions in Windows Phone (and Android) I’ve found that while AMOLED screens are absolutely gorgeous to look at, their power consumption rates, even when attempting to stick to predominantly dark backgrounds, text, themes and the like the devices are still susceptible to massive battery drain when browsing the web or watching videos. Though, it’s hard to blame the manufacturers for the design of the web and applications, it’s saddened me that combining the deep blacks and contrast of OLED’s with the longevity of LCD’s was a pipe dream until very recently. The HTC One X bucked that trend in brilliant style and it seems that the majority of component manufacturers have finally figured out how to build wonderful and power efficient devices en masse. This newest generation of SLCD and IPS displays is testament to that, and as a result, the Lumia 920 receives a healthy bump up in display quality. Does this at all mean it will be best in class? That depends on too many factors to matter, at least nobody will be able to tell you that it’s anything less than brilliant.
SoftwareTo say that Microsoft and Nokia are being paranoid about Windows Phone features leaking out or any non-NDA-ed personnel using the devices is quite frankly the understatement of the century. There’s worse security and less lock-down in a prison! Apart from what the two companies have shown both in June and now, there’s barely a whiff of anything and that’s with an SDK (preview version) that’s already been seeded to the AAA developers and OEM’s best able to put the best apps on the marketplace. That said, the software, Windows Phone 8 has a number of both minor and major changes to the UI and underlying OS. For starters, Nokia Maps is now ubiquitous within the OS, allowing for a less disjointed and “cobbled together” feeling mapping solution. In actual use, it seemed, at least from my experience, a lot snappier than the version present on the Lumia 900 and just as functional, and likely will be a tad more so with time in large part aided by the updated hardware. The tiles are the most obvious change to the look and feel of the OS and it must be said a welcome and long-overdue addition to the platform. In person, they’re much more attractive than the many images online would lead you to believe and I can only hope that developers have been given even more access to live tiles and underlying API’s to further improve the experience. Lenses was the other major aspect of the OS demo-ed for me and I must say it exemplifies everything that Windows Phone does right. Why should I have to open separate apps for Instagram, Pinterest and many other photo and photo-sharing apps in order to take a photo on the fly and upload it seamlessly? Lenses is a way of plugging apps directly into the viewfinder such that at the touch of an on-screen button (or two), pictures can be taken and immediately linked to and/or uploaded using these separate apps. In the demo it worked quite fluidly and left me quite impressed. Cinemascape, the Lenses “lens” created by Nokia, also dubbed “the GIF-maker” was also on show and demonstrated a small hint of the magic to continue coming out of Nokia in the imaging department now that they’ve completed their acquisition of Scalado.
Pureview??We’ve seen the hullabaloo concerning faked images and video, we’ve also seen vindication and proof positive that it is and will be better than the majority of the competition (still waiting on the verdict on the iPhone 5) but does it live up to the Pureview moniker so painfully established by the 808 Pureview. In a single word, yes. I, like most, was skeptical that images like that could be produced by anything short of a DSLR and so did a few others, including Apple at their recent release of the iPhone 5. So you can imagine the look of utter shock on my face when OIS was demoed both on stills and video with nary a blip and image quality so far above the competition that I asked for a second demo (and a third). The first time, I thought it was a fake, the second time my mouth fell open and upon the third demo, it more or less hit the floor and stayed there. It’s good, so good in fact that I’m still trying to wrap my head around how Nokia have managed to eke that much out of that little 1/3.2″ sensor. My pitiful attempts at besting the 920 are posted below.
The technology and whitepaper have been fleshed out in far too many places to warrant me going it over again but I’ll say this, Xenon flash wouldn’t have worked well. Xenon flash has the wonderful ability to seemingly freeze time in place when taking pictures. Alas, that’s a function of the behaviour of the sensor in conjunction with the flash that allows this. A well timed burst of the Xenon flash allows the device to use a very fast shutter time while still allowing the sensor to capture enough light to make something of a decent image. This fast shutter speed is what “freezes time” as it’s colloquially known. Unfortunately, Xenon flashes fit into mobile phones are very much limited for power and moreso at even worse off at range. What this means, is that unless the subject is very close, or the flash very powerful, objects far away are going to be just as impossible to see as they were without a flash. This is where OIS becomes so important. To take better images, at range, with lower levels of light, the sensor needs to stay open for longer thus exposing the image to the possibility of blur. Counteracting this blur allows for more light, more light = bright pictures. On the Lumia 920 it works well and I can’t wait to see how much it shows up the competition come launch.
Major positives:The demo staff were knowledgeable, enthusiastic and very well spoken, able to answer as many questions as I could throw at them and even more willing to show me the cool things the devices could, of which there were many, in spite of the draconian limitations on the software that could be shown. Cool integration of technologies that have been spread far and wide but never yet shoved all into the same device Great hardware and hints at very good software to back it up.
Major sour points:No launch date. Even one as distant as November would be enough to put people off getting a new phone if they knew when to expect it. Sure there have been many rumours, though none corroborated by Nokia, but I can see and understand why there have been delays. The software not being ready yet are just a part of the entire story (more on that in another piece). No SDK release to majority of developers. From the horses mouth and indeed many other sources, we know that certain privileged developers have had access to the SDK for a number of weeks, possibly months, but the vast majority of developers haven’t yet had access to the SDK to allow them the generate the applications the platform needs to have in order to prise away the users of Android and iOS devices. That said, today’s news shows a degree of promise on that front.
Will it be enough?Time will tell, but I’m a bit more than cautiously optimistic that this wave may be enough to drag Nokia out of the doldrums like a bat out of hell and give both Apple and Samsung a real run for their money. Do I think it’s their last chance? No, but it’s getting damn tight. Don’t screw this up Nokia. Gallery at the end. |
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