My Nokia Blog |
- Lumia 920 Spotted Rocking N9-Like Camera UI
- @InstagramWP Twitter Account Appears, Followed by Official @Nokia
- Nokia’s Future Software Updates to Follow Alphabetic Iterations of Gemstones?
- Windows Phone Button Acts as a Charging Indicator on the Lumia 925
- Thickness comparison: Nokia Lumia 920 versus the slimmer, lighter Nokia Lumia 925
- “Nokia Lumia Amber” Arriving this Summer to All Nokia WP8 (Updated)
- Nokia Smart Camera can be launched by camera button as default
- Wireless charging, already phased out or reinvented?
- Low light: Nokia Lumia 925 even better than Nokia Lumia 920, obliterates Samsung Galaxy S4
- Video Collection: Nokia Smart Camera in Action
| Lumia 920 Spotted Rocking N9-Like Camera UI Posted: 14 May 2013 12:27 PM PDT
So once again this can be either of two things, a badly chosen render, or a sing for things to come; what do you guys think? *Note I know they would never adopt the N9 UI as a whole for the camera, mainly due to the squirckle influence of it, but perhaps it’s an omen of a better UI coming to match a better camera? (EOS I’m looking at you)
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| @InstagramWP Twitter Account Appears, Followed by Official @Nokia Posted: 14 May 2013 10:08 AM PDT
What do you guys think? Or is someone at the Nokia twitter account jsut trolling us?
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| Nokia’s Future Software Updates to Follow Alphabetic Iterations of Gemstones? Posted: 14 May 2013 09:50 AM PDT Something I noticed about the upcoming “Lumia Amber” update is the fact that it starts with the letter “A”, which as hopefully most 1st graders could tell you, is the first letter of the alphabet. Potentially this could mean absolutely nothing, but on the other hand it has become customary for software vendors to alphabetically organize their update names (namely Android its names). It seems Nokia are doing the same with their own versions of Microsoft/Windows Phone updates starting with Amber. Provided they continue using “precious stones” as the category:
Of course this could also be a possibility:
The real question is how many stones/girls do we have to wait until we get a notification hub and all the other missing features?
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| Windows Phone Button Acts as a Charging Indicator on the Lumia 925 Posted: 14 May 2013 09:16 AM PDT
Unfortunately for some reason the windows Phone light will only notify you of charging if the battery is completely drained and the phone is off (meaning it’s only useful when you’re charging a dead phone, as a sort of “alert” to let you know that it’s actually charging.
Now what I really want to see is a true notification light, which although it might become redundant with the arrival of an always on screen is still a pretty nifty feature (unless it annoys with a blinding light every two seconds like the Z10).
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| Thickness comparison: Nokia Lumia 920 versus the slimmer, lighter Nokia Lumia 925 Posted: 14 May 2013 09:01 AM PDT Whilst the Nokia Lumia 920 was praised for plentiful innovations and beautiful design, the main qualms by some were thickness and weight. The Nokia Lumia 925 addressed this by improving further on certain innovations (like camera, screen) whilst making it slimmer and lighter. Now I didn’t mind the 920′s weight but others obviously did. The Nokia Lumia 925 felt noticably lighter and the slimmer frame made it somewhat nicer to hold in the hand (depends on the person really). Whilst the back was polycarbonate, the frame of the 925 is anodised aluminium. The 925 is visibly slimmer in comparison. Note also the lack of ports at the bottom as Nokia apparently wanted clean sides for the left and bottom (though it was thought that it was a design guideline for new WP8 to have charging ports at the bottom) Well if it means being able to squeeze things in differently to make it slimmer, why not. The phrase Nokia liked to use was “volumetric thickness of 8.5mm”. Perhaps making an even more tapered design would further add to the illusion of being slim. (Like the macbook air)
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| “Nokia Lumia Amber” Arriving this Summer to All Nokia WP8 (Updated) Posted: 14 May 2013 08:32 AM PDT Nokia have just announced that a future update coming to all WP8 Lumia devices will be receiving a new software update in the summer called Nokia Lumia Amber. Amber will debut on the Lumia 925 with Smart Camera and soon following on other WP8 devices. According to the verge this update will come packaged with the GDR2 update which will also bring an activation to the FM transmitter: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/14/4327026/nokia-lumia-windows-phone-update-fm-radio-july
Update According to the official Windows phone Blog the update will also bring hundreds of small improvements including “datasense” being available to more carriers and phones: The new update, which is expected to start rolling out to existing Windows Phone 8 phones later this summer, brings back support for FM radio (we heard you!) and makes the Data Sense feature of Windows Phone 8 available for more carriers to offer. The update also makes it easier to select, download, and pin tunes in Xbox Music and improves the accuracy of song info and other metadata—something I know music fans will appreciate. (FM Radio and Data Sense availability depend on your phone model and carrier.)
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| Nokia Smart Camera can be launched by camera button as default Posted: 14 May 2013 06:54 AM PDT Along with the Lumia 925, Nokia unveiled their Smart Camera lenses app, which has a lot of cool new features. We’ve done several posts on it today, so I won’t bore you. http://mynokiablog.com/2013/05/14/video-collection-nokia-smart-camera-in-action/ http://mynokiablog.com/2013/05/14/nokia-smart-camera-announced/ Over at Unleash The Phones, they have an image taken of the Nokia Lumia 925′s settings, which allows the user to launch the Smart Camera app by default, when he (or she) presses the physical camera key. This is exactly what I’ve been wanting, as it has been a pain having to go into camera, then into lenses etc. It is actually something that BB10 and the HTC One have had going in their favour. |
| Wireless charging, already phased out or reinvented? Posted: 14 May 2013 06:01 AM PDT Wireless charging, it was pretty much the best thing since sliced bread when it was introduced in the Lumia 820 and 920 late last year. Since then things seem to have changed a bit, wireless charging is still pretty well represented in Nokia products and accessories, yet it seems phones aren't coming with it built in anymore. Does this mean Wireless Charging is dead or is it a golden move? It is pretty much a given that wireless charging adds some bulk to our phones, the 820 has a separate cover that is slightly thicker and the 920 is both a little chubby in thickness but also in terms of weight. In order to create slimmer, and above all, lighter devices Nokia chose to discard inbuilt charging on the 720 and now the 925 as well. This move has arguably led to the far slimmer profiles of both devices and even led to Tom Warren calling the 720 the best Lumia body to date. ‘Let's face it, wireless charging won't be used by everyone.’With wireless charging having taken a back seat in the most recent devices (bar the Verizon bound Lumia 928) where does this leave us? Well, Nokia has chosen to create separate covers that enable wireless charging. The only tell-tale sign are the three dots on the back of the 925 and 720. While it seems a stupefying idea on the surface, it is actually one of the best ideas ever. Let's face it, wireless charging won't be used by everyone. So having the capability built in can be like hauling around deadweight for many people. That is where Nokia's golden move comes in, create separate covers. 'How is that a golden move?' you might ask. Look around you and see how many people have their phones wrapped in protective cases that serve no other purpose than protection. From Otterboxes to the highly flimsy Galaxy model units (those with the foldaround screen cover) Nokia made sure that not only a cover protects your phone, it also adds functionality. And that is the golden move, still offer wireless charging but add the protection of a case and the ability to express oneself with a colourful snap on cover.  Image via @mobilenova From the info that is available now, the cover for the Lumia 925 adds minimal thickness to the overall phone and not much more than any conventional cover/case would. At a rumoured price of 29 euros it isn't highly expensive either, the real wallet gouger is in the charger itself which starts at 60-ish euros for the DT900 charging plate.
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| Low light: Nokia Lumia 925 even better than Nokia Lumia 920, obliterates Samsung Galaxy S4 Posted: 14 May 2013 05:14 AM PDT Nokia had a special room to compare the improved low light performance of the Nokia Lumia 925 against its competitors. They had a Samsung Galaxy s4 for testing (not everyone carries a competitor device, e.g. I only had the 920). Now we know the Nokia Lumia 920 was unmatched for extreme low light. Holy heck, the Nokia Lumia 925 performs even better! The room was soo dark my DSLR and the lens I had on couldn’t take pictures or videos properly inside (the lens has OIS too! and it’s super heavy!). When we took some pictures on the SGS4, I thought I hadn’t taken the picture or I had inadvertently locked the phone. Nope. Nokia pushed the low light capabilities even further to the point that the SGS4 could not produce an image. Here it is against the 920. Apologies for the poor angle – the room was packed and I had to capture what I could given that I had to catch this train back to uni. Now remember how good the pictures are from the 920 low light sans flash. Look at what the 925 can do.
Admittedly the angle is a bit poor there. Another thing to note on the AMOLED display of the 925 is the extreme viewing angles, especially in comparison to the 920. DO NOT compare the image quality between the 925 and 920 based on a picture of a phone screen. I hadn’t adjusted the settings on my camera to even see the screen let alone the fact I should have attempted to bluetooth pictures over. My camera wasn’t focusing at all here…:( I did end up doing the rest of my recordings on the 920 as my DSLR was failing me on that regard. Note the photos are much clearer. The 925 isn’t overexposed, it’s just that the camera wasn’t able to handle it.
So no additional lighting from the flash gun, just the lighting from the displays. You can see just how much more the 925 captures with flash. Again, the 925 is not washed out, it’s just the effect from incorrect camera settings on my end with my DSLR not being able to get the capture correctly.
Imagine this kind of technology WITH the xenon lens. It’s at least one way of improving low light without making the phone thicker than you’d expect due to having xenon. I’m not one to fuss too much on thickness though so bring on xenon + this for me Against competitor devices like the SGS4? Both with flash, the 925 of course still wins. You can’t tell because I did a sucky job and doing this comparison (never again doing this rushed! I shall ask to take the whole day free or get someone else to do it next time. Though on the plus side for me, it was a privilege meeting all these Nokia/Tech peeps in person. I reckon I should have just stayed in London, especially in hindsight now the train in front appears to have hit ‘something’ and we’re stuck on the line and I’m going to be even more late, possibly missing that thing in Uni). In the picture below, the trees don’t even exist in the SGSIV photos. Having flash certainly helped it but not in the same way the 925 did. Hopefully someone else has managed to do a better comparison that what I’ve managed. We’ll find and link to them. Sincerest apologies from me, I should have produced something better or at least tried to redo them, alas, timing issues (I hope it was more me not getting the settings quite right rather than my lens still being broken after coming back from repair on Friday). It was indeed very exciting though – how to get material for posting in 30 minutes and not miss the only train to get you back in time for uni. Haha. Thanks Nokia for the invite to the end. We have some hands on demoes and other pictures to share later on today or perhaps tomorrow.
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| Video Collection: Nokia Smart Camera in Action Posted: 14 May 2013 03:24 AM PDT Here’re a collection of videos showing off the new features in the Nokia Smart Camera:
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