06 December 2013

My Nokia Blog

My Nokia Blog

NokiaUS Sticks It To BlackBerry; Offers Bieber 20 Lumias

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 03:58 PM PST

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Earlier today, several sites ran a story about BlackBerry, part of which is about their celebrity affiliations. We’ve seen them get Alicia Keys on board, but apparently Canadian born, teen pop star, Justin Bieber, had approached the company and pretty much said “I’m Canadian, I love BlackBerry. Give me 20 BB’s, and I’ll promote the company”. Well it never happened – with many sites saying it was a terrible decision. With so many teenage girls obsessed with him, BB could have captured a fair bit of that market.

Anyway, now that you know the back story, Nokia US have tweeted “Beibs” offering him 20 Lumia devices. Its been pretty funny lately to see the whole Nokia vs. BlackBerry on twitter (more recently with Nokia Connects jumping in).

http://twitter.com/NokiaUS/status/408741930642583552

Nokia India: Nokia Zoom Agents: Solve the Case (Zoom and Enhance)

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 12:47 PM PST

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When we first saw the Nokia 808 PureView, we wanted Nokia to take advantage of showing off the ability to take one single photo that has so much detail that you could, as the movies and crime shows do, “zoom and enhance”. Really seeing things even your eyes couldn’t.

This promo from Nokia India might be onto something like that. It’s a quirky but unique feature to Nokia, what with the 808 and now 1020 and 1520.

It’s called “Nokia Zoom Agents”, presumably needing to use the zoom available in the likes of the 1020 as it’s the prize for this competition.

A diamond merchant, Varun Patel was found dead in his apartment. Do you have what it takes to catch his killer? Be a Zoom Agent. Solve the case & win a Nokia Lumia 1020.

Assassins Creed Pirates Comes to iOS and Android; WP Soon?

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 11:35 AM PST

assassins-creed-pirates-650The mobile spin-off of the latest hit in the Assassins Creed franchise “Black Flag”; has just hit the iOS and Google play stores, however it seems WP gamers won’t be left out in the cold this time around. According to a post on their facebook page, the WP version will be coming soon:

planned for later on Windows/windows phone?
Assassin's Creed – France coming soon on Windows Phone Yes

Earlier we heard that the uber-popular GTA San Andres  franchise game would also be making it’s way to WP marketplace, so perhaps the app gap really is closing?

The game is currently priced at $5 for each of the platforms, so the pricing for WP shouldn’t vary much.

Via

Thanks for the tip Prashant

 

Lumia 1320 Shows Up in FCC Clearance, Launch Date Imminent

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 11:26 AM PST

lumia1320THe Lumia 1520′s younger brother, (younger it may be, but not smaller); has shown up in some FCC documents awaiting clearance. The device’s 6 inch 720p screen is an excellent selling point for people who want a phablet on a budget, and hopefully it’ll help conquer the mid-range absurdly large screen market. The 1320 is also carrying LTE for those of you who are lucky enough to live in an area serviced by it, however as mentioned in the release; the 1320 will NOT be headed to the US at the current time, but who knows?

Source

Thanks for the tip Prashant

 

New Whatsapp Update to Bring Saving Videos to Media Library, and Sending Multiple Images; Sending Videos Still MIA

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 08:56 AM PST

Whatsapp

Based on a recent update to the Whatsapp Beta (private), there are a few features coming in the next version of Whatsapp for WP. The main features in this update is the ability to save incoming videos into your library, as well as the ability to share up to ten pictures at once (which has been available in Android and iPhone versions for a while).

Unfortunately however the ability to share a video from your library is still missing, as due to WP restrictions very few apps have access to the media library for videos; hopefully we’ll see that in a future update.

There is no word on when this update will go to the public version, but I don’t think it’s too far off.
WhatsApp-Beta-Update-Speichern-von-VideosSource

 

MVC: Nokia Lumia Themed Dinner in Cape Town

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 08:49 AM PST

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As part of Nokia’s monthly ‘Most Valuable Connector’ segment, each winner gets a suped up version of whatever it was they won with. So, Wynand van Staden won with a Nokia 3310 cake, he was awarded with a Nokia Lumia themed dinner.Screen Shot 2013-12-05 at 16.43.47

Speaking of Nokia cakes, here’s one of another phone that inspired so many Nokia fans, made with sticky chocolate ganache (not ideal for cake designing!)

MNB RG: Dual Shot Nokia Asha 503 Unboxing (Yellow)

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 08:42 AM PST

MNB asha_503_1

Janne delivers an unboxing of the new dual shot Nokia Asha 503:

Yesterday December 4th was the tax-returns day and also a major Nokia launch day in Finland. Nokia Asha 503, Lumia 1520 and Lumia 2520 went on sale here, with apparently fairly good availability all around (you could buy devices without pre-orders, even though pre-orders I hear were excellent too). Initial colors the phones in black, white and yellow, and the tablet in black and red – although I hear the red tablet deliveries were delayed by a few days. Also available are Lumia 1520 covers Nokia CP-623 in black, white, red and yellow up-coming. Unfortunately the Nokia Power Keyboard seems to be delayed until early next year, it will come in black and red then.

My last hands-on thoughts on these devices came from the DigiExpo 2013 fair (my report on MNB:http://mynokiablog.com/2013/11/02/mnb-rg-lumia-1520-2520-and-asha-503-hands-on-report/) and last closer experience with a “basic” Nokia, the Nokia 301 a while back (my report on MNB: http://mynokiablog.com/2013/06/17/mnb-rg-nokia-301-pics-and-hands-on-thoughts/). As I’ve had plenty of time with Lumias and Windows 8.X devices, I was surprisingly most curious about the “baby” of the new launch group, the Nokia Asha 503 – the mini-N9 of sorts. The cheap(ish) price of less than a hundred euros also playing into it, I went and bought one as an impulse buy.

What follows are unboxing photos. Initial feel is that both the box and the phone itself are absolutely tiny, like all recent Asha/basic Nokia phones and their boxes of course. You could literally fit six Asha 503 retail boxes in the space a Nokia mobile phone box from 15 years ago took. While Asha 503 as a device isn’t the thinnest of them all, with all the big-screen smartphone madness going on, it is still very diminutive even inside its fairly thick shell. What’s really new about it is of course those half-transparent dual-shot covers, which seem quite like a scratch magnet though, judging by my DigiExpo experiences, but of course look stunning and very new otherwise. Anyway, the 3″ screen is supposed to be covered by Corning Gorilla Glass (some Nokia pages say version 2, some without a number) and the body itself, of course, wholly removable and easily replaceable, so those bases should be covered.

The sales package (single-SIM here in Finland) contains the phone, a 1200 mAh battery, a 4 GB microSD memory card (pre-installed inside the phone), AC-20 charger and WH-108 stereo headphones – in bright red, for whatever reason, in this yellow phone package.

I will try to post some further experiences in the comments below as I get them. The big deal here, of course, is the upgraded Asha operating experience with swipe. The phone’s swipe to camera feature and 5 MP snapper have actually earned the moniker “Nokia Asha 503 camera phone” in some Finnish retail advertising, which I thought maybe pushing it a little. Then again, 5 MP at this range is perfeclty respectable of course. Although, the QVGA 15 fps video shooting makes it certainly no video camera. Maybe a potato video camera. Well, haven’t tried the camera yet…

MNB asha_503_2

MNB asha_503_3 MNB asha_503_4 MNB asha_503_5

MNB asha_503_6 MNB asha_503_7 MNB asha_503_8

Jolla’s relationship with Nokia “extremely good”, Jolla working on things the world hasn’t seen yet

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 06:47 AM PST

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Speaking with ZDNet, Jolla tells of their story from being a group of Ex-Nokians working through Nokia’s bridge programme to now independently producing their own phone.

Jolla says working on version one of the handset, they wanted to just make a product, stabilise it and stop on the new features. Any new features that weren’t stable were removed. (In reviews, some have said that this was one of the main issues). They note that they know the native Android apps are working well on the Sailfish platform. They didn’t even bother asking google for help or access to their store (though you can do it with a few steps). Instead, Jolla partnered with Yandex and have access to their 80,000 android apps.

There are other partnerships planned – OEMs, chipset vendors, ODMs, network operators to help build an ecosystem around MeeGo.

As Nokia is set to sell their D&S division, Jolla will become the main phone manufacturer in Finland.

“If this goes well, we have plenty of ideas — the problem is we have too many maybe. We just have to choose which one is the coolest one. There are things that the world hasn’t seen yet.”

http://www.zdnet.com/so-jolla-what-are-you-working-on-now-there-are-things-that-the-world-hasnt-seen-yet-7000023736/

Cheers Janne for the tip!

WPC PureView fight: 41MP Nokia Lumia 1020 vs 20MP Nokia Lumia 1520

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 02:21 AM PST

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Here is another photo comparison between the 41MP Nokia Lumia 1020 and the 20MP Nokia Lumia 1520.

The shots from WPC in daylight look pretty similar, at least when looking at thumbnails of the full photo. You can still zoom in the 1520 but just not as much as the 1020.

Screen Shot 2013-12-05 at 10.01.58

 

The 1520 does have the added plus of Lumia Black and enhancements to camera processing.

http://www.wpcentral.com/cameras-nokia-lumia-1520-vs-lumia-1020

You’ll note the 1520 ‘fixes’ the yellow tones in the 1020, where sometimes you take a great picture and after processing “whooosh” there’s a yellow filter. Sometimes it works, making things look nice and saturated with extra vibrant colours, but other times, it looks slightly unpleasant (mostly when people get an extra tan).

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You can see this difference even more in the night shots at least on the bench picture on the left. Though according to WPC, the tones were actually more correct on the 1020, with the 1520 opting to go for the cooler end of the white balance.

Screen Shot 2013-12-05 at 10.01.02

 

 

Video wise, the 1520′s 4 HAAC Rich recording mic gives deeper sound with more bass. The directional recording is seen in the 1520, and when the person recording speaks, it’s really muffled. Good thing there’s an option to switch to recording from all directions. There is of course a good reason for that, when recording video the subject audio is usually in front. It cuts out commentary from behind and the side (would have been useful yesterday for me when my housemate was adding unnecessary narration to a video). This should be noted as most people testing video samples are talking about the audio recording from their voice, and not the usual video recording when something is in front of you.

Picture wise, the 1520 looks much more saturated in colours. The OIS looks really smooth. There’s a bit of wobbling as it attempts to stabilise one frame with another, but the OIS when walking looks almost like it’s on a steadycam. To be fair the OIS on the 1020 is awesome too.

The conclusion on the 1520 puts some negatives on the missing wireless charging and smaller internal memory, though outside of the US, the international versions are said to have wireless charging built in as well as 32GB memory options.

On the camera alone the 1520 produces some fantastic results. The 6″ 1080p viewfinder is phenomenal though won’t be to everyone’s taste. I would have liked to have seen comparisons of people shots, in various lighting conditions, as that’s particularly where the 1020 excels (Xenon freezing).

Nokia’s Devices and Services purhase by Microsoft approved by EU Commision

Posted: 05 Dec 2013 02:00 AM PST

hi-nokia-elop-ballmer-852

 

Following approval by the US Department of Justice, the EU Commision also approved the Nokia D&S sale to Microsoft yesterday.

From the Press Release:

1) Microsoft is unlikely to restrict the supply of its Windows OSs for smart mobile devices to third party device manufacturers after the transaction. Indeed, Microsoft’s share in the mobile OS market is limited. Moreover, to better compete with the leading Android and Apple OS platforms, Microsoft likely needs to continue relying on third party device suppliers to broaden consumer adoption and attract mobile app developers.

2) Microsoft is unlikely to restrict the supply of its mobile apps, such as its Office suite apps and its communication app Skype, to competing providers of smart mobile devices. Since Office apps are currently not available on tablets running third party OSs, a potential supply restriction would be limited to other tablet suppliers using Microsoft’s Windows OSs. However, this strategy would hamper Microsoft’s interest to attract more app developers and ultimately users to its OSs for smart mobile devices. For smartphones, the share of Office apps is minimal and there are many popular competing apps. Similarly, with regard to Skype, other popular apps continue to be available. Moreover, given the low market share of Windows in mobile OSs, limiting interoperability with third-party mobile OSs would ultimately weaken Skype’s competitive offering.

3) Microsoft would not have the ability to restrict the interoperability of competing smart mobile devices with Exchange Server, Microsoft’s enterprise mail server software, because of the contractual terms of their current licenses to Microsoft patents covering the communication protocol that manages synchronisation of email, calendar and contacts between smart mobile devices and Microsoft Exchange. Moreover, given the limited portion of the market which could be foreclosed and the merged entity’s very small market position in the smart mobile device market, such a conduct would in any event not produce anti-competitive effects.

Post “merger”, Nokia will be closely monitored for anti-trust regarding licensing practices under EU antitrust rules which  ”prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position” (Dominant?).

A Microsoft spokesperson said:

We look forward to the date when our partners at Nokia will become members of the Microsoft family, and are pleased that the European Commission has cleared the deal without conditions,

Sources: European Commission

Via: ZDNet Via:  WPC
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