Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia’s second announcement for May is arguably a more notable progression from the Lumia 920 than the US-only Lumia 928. This is the Lumia 925. It’s another flagship, but this one’s setting its sights on the rest of the world. The first thing to note is the change in build materials and profile. While the rest of the Lumia range have stuck to plastics — typically glossy polycarbonate — the Lumia 925 is Nokia’s first Windows Phone to be packed into an aluminum frame. One of the benefits of this change in design? The handset’s weight has plummeted. While the phone has the same dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 1GB RAM and 8.7-megapixel OIS camera of the 920, the Lumia 925 is almost 50 grams (1.8 ounces) lighter than last year’s Lumia 920.

Despite a thinner 8.8mm profile, there’s an identical 2,000mAh battery. Alas, instead of built-in charging, you’ll have to purchase an accessory cover to enable the function on the 925. Said covers will come in red, yellow, black and white, offering a splash of color to the three understated monochrome shades (white, grey and black) of the hardware. The 925 model also sports an 4.5-inch AMOLED screen, so while it matches the resolution of the existing 920 (1,280 x 768), those on-screen blacks — a regular occurrence with the Windows Phone OS — should be notably deeper than the LCD competition. It’s also coated in Gorilla Glass 2, with ClearBlack tech and a high-brightness mode to improve outdoor visibility and the same super-sensitive touchscreen that means you’ll be able to steer the phone with your gloves on. There’s more to say about camera improvements — jump past some Nokia-approved sample shots below to hear more.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia

Comments

Apple has been on a roll for, well, almost as long as we can remember. Basically since the debut of the iMac, the company has been riding a rocketship back from the brink of irrelevance. The iPod, iPhone and iPad have all led it to post record quarter, after record quarter, after record quarter. Now we’re in the second quarter of financial year 2013 and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down much. The company posted $43.6 billion in revenue during the quarter and net itself a handsome profit of $9.5 billion. While those numbers do represent the slowest rate of growth Cupertino has seen in years, it’s hardly the fall from grace that some analysts were predicting. Compared to the same time last year, revenues are up from $39.2 billion though net income has dropped from the Q2 2012 mark of $11.6 billion. Still, the company managed to move more iPhones and iPads than it did during that quarter, and the drop from Q1’s holiday-boosted numbers isn’t particularly alarming. In total it moved 19.5 million iPads and 37.4 million iPhones during the three months ending on March 30th, 2013. In Q1 those numbers were an admitedly more impressive 22.9 milion and 47.8 million, respectively. But, compared to Q2 of 2012, things are still looking up from the 35.1 million iPhones and 11.8 million iPads shipped.

Things are a little less rosy around its non-iOS departments, but we’d hardly say the company was in dire straights. Mac sales were more or less flat both sequentially and year-over-year, falling just under four million units. Meanwhile, the iPod continued its steady decline, moving only 5.6 million units. That’s not only more than a 50 percent drop from last quarter, but a 27 percent drop from the same period last year. The biggest contributor to Apple’s revenue stream continues to be the iPhone, but the iPad is gaining fast and income from iTunes and its other software offerings continues to grow at an impressive rate.

While the first year-over-year drop in profits in almost a decade might give some investors pause, there’s little cause for concern for the future of the company. Cupertino’s healthy war chest now sits at $145 billion in cash, up from the $121 billion and change it had at the end of Q4 2012. We’ll be listening in to the conference call at 5 PM and we’ll update with any juicy tidbits after the break.

Filed under: Misc, Mobile, Apple

Comments

Source: Apple

Don’t worry, this time it’s not a patent issue. However, it is more bad news for HTC’s already-delayed One. Nokia has been granted an injunction by the Amsterdam district court concerning the technology HTC used in its current flagship. The legal battle involves a pair of high-amplitude mics housed within One’s aluminum body, which are apparently the same dual-membrane components that Nokia’s used in its recent Lumia 720, seen above.

The Finnish company recently applied for a preliminary injunction, pointing the finger at ST Microelectronics, which is responsible for manufacturing the mic for both Nokia and HTC. According to our source, the issue is likely to be a breach of an NDA between Nokia and ST Electronics, as the phone maker asserts that the “microphone components [were] invented by and manufactured exclusively for Nokia.” We’re still hearing new details and will update as we learn more. We’ve also reached out to HTC for comment. For now, you can read up on Nokia’s statement following the court’s decision, embedded after the break.

Update: HTC has offered up an official statement in response to the injunction: “HTC is disappointed in the decision. We are considering whether it will have any impact on our business and we will explore alternative solutions immediately.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, HTC, Nokia

Comments

Nokia may have seen an operating loss in Q1 2013, but the news isn’t all bad. The company saw revenue of $7.7 billion and managed to sell 5.6 million Lumias, which equates to a 30 percent increase in handset sales over last quarter. As for earnings, Nokia put a shiny buff on them by trumpeting a net profit of $236 million using the non-IFRS accounting method. By stricter IFRS rules, it actually lost $150 million, but that still compares favorably to the vast billion dollar losses it made in the same quarter of 2012.

Of the Finnish outfit’s handset sales, North America accounted for a mere 400,000 out of the 61.9 million sold compared to the 700,000 it sold last quarter, making it the only region that saw a decline during the period. Other regions, like China, saw a large bump in smartphone revenues, largely due to the popularity of pricey handsets like the Lumia 920. CEO Stephen Elop said the company’s bullish on Lumia sales, considering the (rumored) Lumia 928 coming to Verizon, along with the recently launched Lumia 520, 620 and 720. He said that sales of other devices were a dark spot, however — so the company’s likely hoping all the new WP8 devices will offset those lost sales next quarter.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia

Comments

Source: Nokia

Today Facebook finally took the wraps off Home, a suite of apps and a home screen replacement for Android phones. It’s not just a new UI for launching apps however; it replaces the lockscreen with Cover Feed and prioritizes updates from people instead of apps. There is a standard paginated launcher, that is always just a swipe away. But the focus is on the full-screen images that are your new welcome screen. These are status updates from friends that you can easily flip through and double tap to like when someone posts something exciting. Plain text status updates are placed over a user’s cover photo, to keep the appearance consistent with photo-centric posts.

Notifications are presented as small cards, which Facebook applies an algorithm to, in order determine the updates that are most important to you. Just like with the standard Android UI you simply swipe notifications off screen to dismiss them. But, if you want to remove all of them in one shot, you long press a single notification and the rest will be drawn to it and you’ll be able to dismiss the entire stack.

Filed under: Software, Mobile, Facebook

Comments