Huawei unveils Ascend D quad, Ascend D quad XL and Ascend D1 Android phones.
Asus announces Padfone tablet/smartphone hybrid
Asus on Monday unveiled the Padfone from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The hybrid device was first announced in May last year, however a bit has changed since the Padfone's initial announcement at Computex 2011. .
Samsung announces Galaxy Note 10.1 with Android 4.0
Samsung on Monday took the wraps off another new addition to its Android tablet lineup, the Galaxy Note 10.1. Like the supersized "phablet" it joins in the Galaxy Note family, the Note 10.1 includes Samsung's S Pen stylus for drawing, note-taking, highlighting and much more..
Samsung Galaxy S III full specs
We reported some exclusive details surrounding Samsung's upcoming flagship Galaxy S III smartphone this past weekend, and now we have received some more information that helps us paint a more complete picture. And as that picture becomes more clear, this sure looks like the baddest Android smartphone the world hasn't yet seen. We reported that the new Samsung flagship would launch in a simultaneous fashion across the globe, but we now have some more detailed specifications to report. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the Samsung Galaxy S III.
After seeing the C7 listed in what looked to be legitimate Nokia documents, we now have our first look at the handset -- or at least a device that claims to be the C7-00. Purported specs scrapped from a Chinese site suggest an 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, stereo speakers, 3.5-mm headphone jack, and a display measuring about 3.5-inches. It's unclear if said display is resistive or capacitive or if we're looking at an S60 5th or Symbian^3 OS until somebody switches the damn thing on. Until then you can oogle the profile and backside shots after the break.
Say what you will about Nokia's software, there's no faulting the E70-series of QWERTY candybars, which marry delectable keyboards with thin, classy, and surprisingly rugged design -- and of course top it off with an almost-just-too-small screen. The latest of these is the new Nokia E73 Mode for T-Mobile US (that's right, a Nokia phone on a US carrier!), which will start shipping on June 16th. The S60 handset has a 5 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, WiFi, free turn by turn Ovi Maps, and not much more to speak of to set it apart from its predecessors, which is a good or bad thing depending upon what you want out of a phone. The best news, however, is that it's retailing for $69.99 on a two year contract.
Among the Nokia N8's neater tricks is its support for USB On-The-Go, which basically lets you connect USB peripherals (flash drives, for example) to the phone and have it act as a host -- a duty usually reserved for heavier-duty devices like PCs. Though the N8 is still a solid month or three away from release, we're getting a nice little video demo on YouTube today of an N8 being walked through the paces of connecting both a plain-vanilla USB drive and another Symbian-based Nokia candybar (brownie points for naming the model in comments, by the way). Basically, you can treat the connected hardware as mass storage and browse it just as you would the N8's internal space, which basically means you've got unlimited music capacity as long as you've got a pocket full of USB sticks and a micro USB-to-USB adapter cord. Follow the break for video.
We've heard a similar message from Nokia dating all the way back to MeeGo's introduction at MWC back in February, so it comes as little surprise that Espoo is apparently trumpeting the virtues of ARM for its first MeeGo-powered device that's still targeted for the tail end of 2010. What might make this particularly interesting is the fact that MeeGo 1.0 is clearly further along for Atom devices than it is for the Cortex A8-based N900, not to mention that Nokia has already warmed up to Intel thanks to its Booklet 3G -- but regardless of the silicon, getting the platform solid enough for any sort of retail device by the end of 2010 still seems like a tricky proposition when you figure that the ARM build doesn't even have a proper user interface yet. Ultimately, it might come down to a question of size; Intel still hasn't proven that it can scale Atom down far enough to tackle the smartphone market head-on, so if Nokia wants to go small with its first MeeGo hardware, that alone could be impetus enough to go ARM. Source
We know, we know, you were banking on taking an N8 with you when you go summering in Cape Cod in July, but that might be a tall order because we're hearing from a trusted source that August 24 has been pegged as the big release date for Nokia's Symbian^3-powered beast. Pricing had already been announced at €370 ($465), but if you're interested in shedding an extra hundred for no apparent reason, Amazon Germany is now officially taking pre-orders for €469.50 ($590) in black -- just one of the five N8 shades Espoo will be pushing around the world. We think we'd recommend holding off on signing up for Amazon's enticing deal here, quite honestly -- especially considering the magnetic attraction we've got to that totally unapologetic orange version. Source
When we reviewed Nokia's Ovi Maps and pitted it against the competition from Google we found it was by far the quickest to calculate routes and get you on your way... or back on your way if you meandered off. But, interaction with the app itself was a bit sluggish, something that's said to be fixed in version 3.0.4, also dubbed SR4. This version offers some serious performance improvements for tapping around the interface and also mixes in POI reviews from Qype. Qype is a sort of European version of Yelp with a similarly silly name, and while that doesn't help we Americans much, we always did feel like something of an afterthought to Nokia anyway. The new version of Ovi Maps is out now, so get it while the gettin's good.
This is totally out of the blue, but we were just hit up with a screen shot suggesting that T-Mobile USA will be launching a portrait QWERTY handset from Nokia on June 16 known as the E73 'Mode.' As is evidenced with the Nuron, T-Mobile has a tendency to assign trademarkable names to Nokias in its lineup that are known elsewhere in the world by their model number only, so we imagine that this phone will end up launching globally simply as the E73 as it takes over the E72's throne as Espoo's top productivity beast. More on this as we get it, but in the meantime, check out a bigger shot of the phone after the break.
What do you know, even professional coders like to develop things on the side. Opera's mobile dev team has been working on a "hobby project" to bring its browser to the Maemo-sporting Nokia N900 and N8x0 devices, and today sees the first fruit of that labor in the form of a "preview build" release. Fredrik Ohrn warns us that there might not ever be a final version, since this is being done just for fun -- and particularly in light of the MeeGo future that awaits the platform -- but for now it's yet another option for your versatile mini-computer. Click the source for the download.
Looks like settlement negotiations in the various Nokia / Apple patent lawsuits aren't going too well -- Espoo's just hit Cupertino with a second federal patent lawsuit, this time alleging the iPad 3G and iPhone infringe five patents related to "enhanced speech and data transmission, using positioning data in applications and innovations in antenna configurations that improve performance and save space, allowing smaller and more compact devices." Interestingly, Nokia's filed this one in the Western District of Wisconsin, a so-called "rocket docket" that's well-known for bringing patent cases to settlement or trial in just over a year. That means we could see some real movement in this dispute within our lifetimes, but we're not holding our breath for a definitive conclusion -- by our count, Apple and Nokia now have some five pending legal actions between them, including one that's been placed on hold pending an ITC decision. Anyone want to bet how long it takes for Apple to add another countersuit to the mix?
Nokia's N8 might not be for sale but it's certainly out in the internet wilds. A few, presumably pre-production, units have already made their way onto some Arabic sites for dissection and lustful right-to-left analysis. SaudiMac had the good fortune to see some early retail packaging with "N8-00 / 32GB" printed (and later Photoshopped out) directly on the box. While that could indicate the N8's support for 32GB microSD cards, we're guessing (hoping?) it's an unannounced model sporting 32GB of fixed internal flash memory to accompany the 16GB model already announced. We've also got a user from the ArabNokia forums demonstrating the removal of the N8's battery -- a simple operation requiring the removal of two screws to slide the battery out of the chassis' bottom similar to the HTC Legend. The whole procedure is so simple that we have to wonder why Nokia didn't take the industrial design a step further and make the standard 1,200mAh Nokia BL-4D battery (used in the N97 mini) user replaceable in the first place. Regardless, it's good to know that you can swap the Li-Ion battery in a pinch or whenever you finally hit the lifetime recharge cap -- you didn't need that warranty anyway, right?
Web browsing fiends of the world already have enough reason to envy N900 owners on account of the built-in browser's excellence and the availability of an official Firefox release -- both with full Flash support -- but if that's enough, there's now another name-brand option in the works. Well, sort of. You see, Chromium for Maemo isn't an official port -- but the Maemo community is filled with tinkerers, and that has inevitably led to the availability of a hacked version of the Debian release that apparently works quite wonderfully on the N900 (yes, including Flash) with a 100 score on the elusive Acid test. It's said to be a little buggy at the moment, so hopefully that'll improve over time; you've got to download and install the package manually rather than going through a repo, but as an N900 owner, odds are pretty good that you're familiar with the tactic already. Perhaps Google wants to take this little project over? Source
Nokia's Ovi Store may still be seriously losing in the app war to Apple and Google, but something tells us Espoo's betting on its new Ovi App Wizard to help it gain some ground. Putting mobile software creation in the hands of the code-illiterate, the auto-generated application wizard lets anyone -- and we mean anyone -- turn any RSS or Atom feed out there into an app, and publish it to the Ovi Store. Surprisingly, it really is that simple. While we could have made a personal app with our Twitter and Facebook feed, we went ahead and finally made an Ovi Engadget app by simply going to oviappwizard.com and going through the four step process -- we put in all three RSS feeds, uploaded our logos, tweaked the colors and hit publish. According to Nokia it should only take 24 hours for the app to be approved -- yes, there's some sort of approval process -- but we're still waiting for our app to show up in the storefront so we can download it on our N97. There's the ability to serve up third party ads, but you'll have to prove that you own the content you've placed in your app. Again, super simple, but we're a bit wary of the sorts of apps that will start to pop up, and not sure we need everyone's own personal feeds/sites overtaking the store. But we'll let you be the judge of that -- go on, hit the read link, create an app, and Ovi-populate.
Just gaze upon those curves up above and tell us what they remind you of. Yes indeed, the Nokia N98 -- which seemed so futuristic we were inclined to dismiss it as the product of a hyperactive imagination -- is today looking all too credible thanks to the obvious design similarities it shares with the officially released N8. Starting with the distinctive tapered edges with contrast coloring, moving through the black bezel-sporting display, and jotting down to the positions of the Nokia and N00 logos as well as the Options menu, the viewer can't help but be convinced that this February leak came with no small portion of truthiness to it. Now, we don't live anywhere near Espoo, so we can't tell you whether this was just a precursor to the N8, which lost its physical keyboard and N9x naming scheme to become the beastly media phone we know today. But wouldn't it be lovely to believe Nokia's working on all cylinders and planning to introduce a 4-inch QWERTY variant of its new flagship?
Nokia's N8 might not be for sale but it's certainly out in the internet wilds. A few, presumably pre-production, units have already made their way onto some Arabic sites for dissection and lustful right-to-left analysis. SaudiMac had the good fortune to see some early retail packaging with "N8-00 / 32GB" printed (and later Photoshopped out) directly on the box. While that could indicate the N8's support for 32GB microSD cards, we're guessing (hoping?) it's an unannounced model sporting 32GB of fixed internal flash memory to accompany the 16GB model already announced. We've also got a user from the ArabNokia forums demonstrating the removal of the N8's battery -- a simple operation requiring the removal of two screws to slide the battery out of the chassis' bottom similar to the HTC Legend. The whole procedure is so simple that we have to wonder why Nokia didn't take the industrial design a step further and make the standard 1,200mAh Nokia BL-4D battery (used in the N97 mini) user replaceable in the first place. Regardless, it's good to know that you can swap the Li-Ion battery in a pinch or whenever you finally hit the lifetime recharge cap -- you didn't need that warranty anyway, right?
Intel and Nokia certainly surprised a few of us yesterday when they decided to merge Moblin and Maemo into the new, more terribly-named MeeGo OS, but it looks like LG is ready to roll with it -- the Moorestown-powered LG GW990 we saw at CES will be one of the first MeeGo phones when it launches later this year. Of course, that doesn't mean much of anything beyond branding, since the GW990 uses a custom UI on top of the x86-based Moblin core and we doubt there's any of Maemo's ARM-based code involved there, but it's a definite sign of things to come. So, Nokia -- are we going to see a Moorestown N900, or what?
Put your skeptic hats on kids 'cause we've got a juicy one for you. When Greig Williams, Nokia's General Manager for South East Europe, was asked by the German language Die Presse whether Ovi Maps would be coming to Android and Windows Mobile he responded very simply, "That will be the next step." Well then, that's pretty clear... but as much as we'd like to believe it, we simply can't pin our hopes to this statement alone.
Remember, Nokia's motivation for making its Ovi Maps service free was to sell more handsets; not handsets from its competitors but high-margin smartphones from Nokia in an effort to boost its profits. And unless it can pump out the Android version before Google Navigation goes global, there won't be much motivation to download a presumably fee-based (it certainly won't be free) Ovi Maps on the platform unless Android users are willing to pay to have Nokia's localized maps on the device instead of downloading them over the air as the Google offering requires. Besides, is Nokia really going to dedicate staff to Android development when its more advanced Ovi Maps still aren't available on its much touted Maemo MeeGo mobile computing platform? Not likely. Regarding "Windows Mobile," well, 6.x's days are numbered and getting Ovi Maps approved on Windows Phone 7 might not ever happen in light of Microsoft's own efforts with Bing navigation. Of course, Greig offers no dates, and on a long enough time line anything is possible. We've already contacted Nokia for clarification and will update you just as soon as we hear back.
Update: Nokia just got back to us with an unsurprising response: "have spoken to Greig and he absolutely didn't make that statement. As I understand it, this has now been, or in the process of being, taken down by the Die Presse journalist at their site." So much for that.
We can't say that we'll miss the awkwardly named Comes with Music service branding from Nokia. Of course, we're making the assumption that India's recently christened Ovi Music Unlimited store will be making its way global as Nokia continues to tighten up its service offerings in the race to compete in the era of modern smartphones. It's certainly consistent with the new Ovi Music naming convention so why not. Otherwise, it looks like nothing else about the all you can eat (for a year) music offering has changed -- particularly the DRM that locks "your" music to your PC or CWM OMU handsets for life-ish.
If you live in India, our story was correct -- your mobile subscription music service will be called "Ovi," and no longer carry the weight of the cumbersome Comes with Music branding -- but we're hearing that in other Nokia territories, including the UK, that's not quite the case. Nokia UK told Pocket-lint that while the company's online music store will indeed be renamed "Ovi Music" across all 22 territories this year, the Comes with Music service is here (and there) to stay. To tell you the truth, though, we're not that interested in the fate of a brand name. We'd prefer if Nokia made a more ballsy move -- like discontinuing their service's most controversial feature, Comes with DRM.
What does that look like to you? Sure looks like a probable Nokia flagship candidate for the upcoming launch of Symbian^3 to ride. Remember, we've already heard about a N8-00 said to be sporting a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen, 12 megapixel camera, and HDMI-out. This unnamed device features a 12 megapixel camera with Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics, an HDMI jack next to a top-mounted 3.5-mm headphone jack, and a bottom-loading battery allowing the phone to keep a unibody design (a la the HTC Legend). The screen is big, at least 3.5 inches and possibly hovering around 4 inches. Oh, and a QWERTY is nowhere to be found. So Nokia, got anything you'd like to announce?
Update: Eldar Murtazin, a man who knows a thing or two about pre-production Nokia devices, says the N8-00 is real and due in September.
When the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was released a little more than a year ago, we thoroughly panned it in our review -- put simply, it felt undercooked and uncompetitive in a world where webOS, iPhone OS, and Android were all realities, regardless of Nokia's existing smartphone dominance through much of the world. More than a year later, we're now presented with the Nokia Nuron, a pretty close relative of that first S60 5th Edition device from back in the day; it's simply a carrier-branded version of the 5230, which itself is a lower-end variant of the 5800.
Despite its flaws, the 5800 has gone on to become a global success for Nokia -- but can the Nuron do the same in a market traditionally unfazed by Nokia's advances? More directly, has Nokia's first volley in the modern touchphone battle evolved enough to become a prime-time player in the States? Let's find out. Nokia Nuron for T-Mobile review
As you might be able to gather from its family tree, the Nuron is a dead ringer for the 5230 and for the 5800 before it -- it's the same physical layout (and made from the same materials) all the way around, and the white / silver color scheme that T-Mobile has chosen for its version might be our favorite of the lot. Along the right side you've got a one-position camera button (there's no autofocus to worry about), a volume rocker, and the lock / unlock slider familiar to those who've used the 5800, N900, or a number of other Nokia products. On the left you'll find two slots protected by flaps -- one for the microSD card, another for the SIM; getting the SIM in is a simple matter, while getting it out again requires just a little more effort since you've got to remove the battery and use a pen or similarly-shaped object to pop it back out through a slot in the circuit board, but it shouldn't be a big deal unless you do a ton of SIM swapping. Along the top you've got a power button that calls up the typical profile menu when pressed, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a micro-USB port protected by a flap, and -- get this -- an old-school 2mm power jack. Why's it there, you ask? Because the Nuron doesn't charge over micro-USB, which is positively unheard of by 2010 standards, even in Nokia's own product pipeline. The only possible explanation is that the Nuron's based on 18 month-old hardware, but that doesn't make it acceptable.
The volume rocker is deceiving, particularly for those not used to Nokia's quirky way of handling things. Basically, it does absolutely nothing most of the time, because it isn't used for adjusting ringer volume -- for that, you've got to muck around with your profile (to be fair, Nokia does a far better job supporting profiles than most manufacturers, but it still takes a little more effort than we'd like). Instead, the rocker only comes into play when you're in a call or listening to music, or intermittently as a zoom control for some applications -- though we couldn't figure out a rhyme or reason to how or where Nokia decided to implement it (it doesn't work in the browser, for example).
On the left side, you'll also find a small hole toward the bottom. This is the lanyard port, an accessory that plays a slightly more important role on the Nuron than on most phones because -- like the 5800 -- it's provided with a plectrum in the box. As a refresher, "plectrum" is the uncool dictionary term for a guitar pick, and "uncool" is exactly how we'd describe Nokia's expectation that anyone would want to carry this thing on a string hanging off the corner of their phone. How necessary is the plectrum, exactly? Fortunately, we found that the resistive display pared with the latest incarnation of S60 5th Edition here does a relatively good job of keeping our fat fingers happy, and for those very rare occasions where we need more precision, we can just turn our finger around and use our fingernail temporarily. Disaster averted, no plectrum necessary -- but seriously, if Nokia really thought you'd need a tool like this, they would've been well-served to find a way to slip a stylus into the case (something better than the 5800's afterthought of a stylus built into the battery cover, that is). We're sure there's room.
We know there'd be room for a stylus because something very, very important was left out of the Nuron: WiFi. To leave out WiFi from a smartphone these days and charge $70 for it on contract is almost insulting, and it's particularly egregious when you're launching the device on the carrier with the smallest 3G footprint of the Big Four. Of course, we've got to let T-Mobile take part of the blame on this one -- they (and their customers) would've been well-served to ask Nokia for a branded version of the WiFi-equipped 5800 rather than the 5230, which in turn would've made us a wee bit more comfortable with the sticker price. As it stands, though, this is an extremely difficult device to recommend if you're outside of T-Mobile's 3G coverage area.
As for software, S60 5th hasn't evolved much from its humble roots -- you certainly won't find anything akin to Symbian^4 here. Many of our complaints from the 5800 carry over, like the mixed item-selection paradigm (one tap on the main menu, two taps in lists) and the weak text entry, but the addition of inertial scrolling makes a surprisingly big difference in everyday usability. The way we'd describe it is this: current dumbphone users, S60 5th Edition users, and most S60 3rd Edition users will feel right at home with the Nuron's user experience, but everyone else -- particularly anyone who's used a Pre, iPhone, or Android device -- will be a bit stymied by some of the platform's stranger principles.
The phone offers up essentially the same tried-and-true WebKit-based champion of a browser that Nokia has been using on its smartphone for years, which does a fabulous job of rendering most sites designed for desktops; finger scrolling and automatic orientation changes both work well, too, but we found that the phone tended to choke up on more complex sites (Engadget is an unfortunate example). In general, the phone felt a little underpowered for some of the tasks it was being asked to perform; the "bounce" effect at the ends of lists during inertial scrolls was a little jerky, for example, and even simple tasks like pausing music were met with momentary delays -- nothing more than a fraction of a second, but perceptible nonetheless.
The big deal about the Nuron -- the 800-pound gorilla on the spec sheet, if you will -- is the fact that it includes Ovi Maps with turn-by-turn capability for free out of the box, making it one of the cheapest phones to ship anywhere with usable in-car navigation at no additional charge. We've already shown that Ovi shakes out as a pretty good solution when you put it up against the competition, and the Nuron is no exception -- but the phone shares the same weakness that we've seen on countless Nokias (and BlackBerrys) of the past: it's pretty hard to get a location lock. Anyone with an Android device or an iPhone of any generation knows that they can hop into their mapping app and get a rough location fix almost immediately, but even with AGPS fully enabled on the Nuron, we waited for several minutes by a window with downtown Washington, DC showing on the display (we're in Chicago) before giving up.
The 5230 is a phone that sells internationally for €149 unsubsidized, unlocked, and unbranded. That's just $200! The Nuron, by contrast, is locked and branded, which immediately devalues the phone by a somewhat unquantifiable amount -- but regardless of the dollar figure you want to put on that, it's worth something less than $200. T-Mobile meanwhile charges you $70 to own this phone on top of a two-year contract with a $200 early-termination fee. Translated, that means that if you buy this phone, break your contract, and keep the phone, you're out $270.
Coincidentally, we kept thinking to ourselves "this might be a decent phone if it were free on contract" as we played with it. But it's not free, and it's certainly not worth a dime more than that. In other words, it's -- drum roll, please -- Unrecommendable at Any Price.
Here's another way of looking at it. In the context of T-Mobile's smartphone lineup, you've got the WinMo-based Dash 3G at $50, the G1 at $100, and the CLIQ XT at $130; realistically, we might expect to see the G1 fall in price one more time before it's discontinued. The Dash 3G's WinMo roots and lack of a touchscreen make it a tough call, but we wouldn't hesitate to recommend a G1 over the Nuron; like the G1, Nokia's latest entry certainly isn't going to win any beauty or thickness contests, and the G1 is arguably a significantly more capable device out of the box. Yes, free turn-by-turn is the Nuron's ace in the hole -- but when you've got this many negatives stacked up against you, it's just not enough, especially when you consider that Google Maps Navigation is on Android 1.6 anyhow.
If there's a positive we can take from this, it's that Nokia and T-Mobile are starting to work a lot more closely together than they have in the past; the Nuron is evidence of that, of course, and the N900's AWS support is a telling sign, too. With MeeGo in the pipe and Symbian chugging along, we're excited to see what these guys do together in the future, but for now, the Nuron -- which hits stores this Wednesday -- is unfortunately a strong avoid.
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