11 January 2014

My Nokia Blog

My Nokia Blog


Could weird unannounced Asha be the Nokia Asha 230 “Spinel”? ‘Leaks’ on Nokia site and developer video

Posted: 10 Jan 2014 12:32 PM PST

Screen Shot 2014-01-10 at 20.21.46Yesterday there was a post about an odd looking Nokia Asha 501. Must have been a mix up right? Eagle eye’d “JLIT99″ commented that we’ve seen this before, saying it’s the Asha Spinel. @evleaks showed off this device.

Screen Shot 2014-01-10 at 20.19.20

Now is it really another Nokia Asha device? AKA Asha 230 Spinel or just a placeholder device for Asha? It’s odd that the developer video uses a different aspect ratio for the app creation.

Screen Shot 2014-01-10 at 20.17.09

Also, why call this device the 501 when the 501 doesn’t look like this? A 501 looks like the picture below.

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 16.42.25

The original @evleaks tweet doesn’t seem to make any reference to ‘Spinel’ though.

#CES Video: Nokia’s Head of Imaging Juha Alakarhu – Nokia Imaging team working on making impossible possible

Posted: 10 Jan 2014 12:15 PM PST

Screen Shot 2014-01-10 at 19.44.47

Got 15 minutes? Check out this video from Engadget where Brad Molen interview’s Juha Alakarhu, head of Nokia’s Imaging!

They talk about the history of PureView as a way to get around optical zooming. Back in 2007, it wasn’t possible. Zoom Reinvented was something that came after, being able to zoom in or out after you take the photo. The invention became so much more when they put it into a product.

Transition of Symbian to WP? 1 YEAR. PureView process itself took 5 years.  Original 5 years was designing to make the idea become realistic (a lot of tech development).

The Windows platform was excellent. The concept of dual capture recording oversampled and full resolution at the same time to zoom back. It was actually surprisingly easy to implement that on windows.  But also developing algorithms on symbian and making them for windows – there was lots of hard work in making it happen on a different platform.

On competitors:

Brad say’s he’s always felt the 1020 as top notch and top of the class. He’s very impressed. On the Android side, the competitors have been taking their time to get where Nokia is. Are there limitations to Android causing this, asks Brad? Is this something WP is giving an advantage?

(I think it’s more Nokia than the actual OS, no?)

Juha says he wouldn’t be able to know so much about Android but they have a really passionate team, working impossible projects for 10-11 years.

  • Impossible to make LED to make 100 Lux at 1 metre
  • Impossible to make smartphone camera with sharpness similar to SLR (DPReview confirms)

Impossible made possible so many times. It’s about the team and how they’re working at NOKIA to make this happen.

I love his passion. You can see how much he loves the challenges on his face.

Impossible. + drinks. = Possible! Magic.

“Beer makes wonderful things happen” -Juha.

I like this kind of thinking. There are people that see obstacles and stop and then there are others that see solutions to those obstacles.

The future?

What’s gonna happen with the imaging team when MS takes over?  Juha has personal friends at MS and they’ll be a really strong team together to make better products. Juha promises to push the boundaries of digital imaging.

Vision over the next few years?  Juha jokes about revealing the roadmap…

Where does Nokia go from here? Brad says the 40MP camera is hard to beat. Where are we going?

Juha: It’s a really exciting time right now. Sight is the most important human sense. You can always make things better.

He mentions a little bit about post editing and Nokia Camera’s smart mode, and lenses like Refocus to make new experiences that we weren’t able to think about in the past.  Now the technologies are growing faster than ever and it’s super fun for Juha to work in this field.

Brad talks about camera phone’s being used for snapchat, instagram, facebook. Is that a hindrance as all that imaging goes to waste?

(For me, no. People are taking more and more time to take pictures. They’ll want better cameras. Plus you see the likes of the 1020 USED in more professional scenes, such as music videos and Nokia’s own promo videos)

Juha says it definitely helps. Now he can share his photos with everybody. More people are excited about imaging. You can take images on a Nokia camera that others can’t (e.g. frozen low light due to xenon flash in N82, N8, 808, 1020), Nokia photos stand out in the crowd. Social imaging puts a stronger pressure to make big innovations in imaging.

Smartphones taking over DSLR’s?

Juha says he doesn’t want to dictate what someone uses. He uses a DSLR AND a 1020. He recognises the pros and cons of each device.  He talks about comparisons between SLR’s and 1020 and how unbelievable it is.

808

Juha was taking a group photo last summer, prior to having the 1020. Others were using DSLRs. He recommended they try the 808, you’ll get better quality. They were of course skeptical. But when they looked at the DSLR photo and 808 but the 808 photo was BETTER!

Engadget

32GB Nokia Lumia 1520 on AT&T for $249.99 – out of stock already?

Posted: 10 Jan 2014 07:25 AM PST

Screen Shot 2014-01-10 at 15.23.05

For those wanting even more internal memory storage (though you do have microSD too) for your AT&T 1520, you can order one today.

http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/devices/nokia/lumia-1520-32gb-matte-black.html

Was it ever in stock? It’s apparently out of stock already.

Via: Reddit

Clove compares Nokia Lumia 1520 with HTC One

Posted: 10 Jan 2014 06:59 AM PST

Screen Shot 2014-01-10 at 14.55.26

Here’s Clove doing a quick comparison between the HTC One and Nokia Lumia 1520.

It’s pretty much just a side by side spec thing. If they mention Ultrapixel, I think it’s only fair to mention PureView, no? Though they do mention it later in camera features.

Screen Shot 2014-01-10 at 14.57.21

 

The comparison that perhaps most might look for would be the 5.9″ HTC One Max.

Edit:

Vs S4

Plex and NFC Toolkit Updated

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 11:57 PM PST

Two of my favourite apps on WP8 got updates overnight; Plex and NFC Toolkit.

wp_ss_20140109_0009

Plex was updated to v1.6.05 and adds:

  • Improved discovery of local servers that failed to publish
  • Referencing to the new Plex.tv website

It also has a number of fixes, such as:

  • Update play progress for queued and recommended content
  • OnDeck updates automatically when episodes are played
  • Ignore stale published server entries
  • Don’t respond to GDM searches when listening for Plex Companion Commands

wp_ss_20140109_0010

NFC Toolkit has been bumped to 0.9.8.1 and brings with it a slew of new features and improvements.

  • Added placeholder for albums with no images in album chooser
  • Fixed error that occurs sometimes when the active playing song changes in car dashboard
  • Mix Play & Share is now respecting only countries where MixRadio is available
  • Nokia Music is now only available in car dashboard in countries where available
  • Added more system apps to write tag page
  • Added possibility to write tags for other devs
    • add their app to the list of launchable apps in profiles
    • write data on NFC tags: website, email, text, launching settings pages, launching system apps (list also updated), and launching apps
    • launch NFC toolkit itself
  • Added uservoice page for support (FAQ & Feedback)
  • Added links to NFC stores that deliver to a broad range of countries (RapidNFC and TagAge). When buying NFC tags at TagAge, a 10% discount will be granted by using the code: “MSiccDev10″.
  • Added also to possibility to save the corresponding links to Pocket to make it easier to order tags from your PC

 

 

Video: PocketNow’s first ReReview of 2014 looks at the Nokia Lumia 1020 – the best camera phone of 2013

Posted: 09 Jan 2014 11:05 PM PST

Screen Shot 2014-01-10 at 06.57.06

As part of their series to see how well devices age after the initial review, Michael Fisher looks at the Nokia Lumia 1020.

 

  • 1020 hardware built to last (software wise)
  • Hardware near pristine condition
  • Wishes for cyan though yellow is eye catching and makes people ask if that’s the Nokia with the insane camera.
  • Best smartphone shooter of 2013
  • Despite competitors upping their game, safe bet that the 1020 camera will remain untouchable for much of the year.
  • Camera app still slow to open/save.
  • Used with care, performance in most situations is outstanding.
  • Manual controls more intuitive than any other smartphone camera.
  • With the exception of the 808 PureView, it’s the best camera we’ve ever used on a mobile phone.
  • Almost no lag has crept in to the day to day software experience.
  • Happy to continue recommending it to WP buyers

 

Pocketnow

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