If you didn’t get enough mobile news during the week, not to worry, because we’ve opened the firehose for the truly hardcore. This week brought additional peeks at the purported Nokia EOS cameraphone, leaked screenshots of the BlackBerry OS 10.2 update and the arrival of a new budget smartphone from Huawei in the UK. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore all that’s happening in the mobile world for this week of June 3rd, 2013.
You know how it goes, you buy a phone on eBay, and it comes with a developer / pre-release version of a major mobile OS. Well, if these images are to be believed, that’s at least what happened to one bargain-hunting Windows Phone fan. The screenshots — said to be taken from a Nokia 920 — show Windows Phone 8, but with a few new tweaks and features. Most notable, will likely be the notifications, but other tidbits include App list ordering based on frequency of use, week view in the calendar and the option to kill apps from the multitask screen. The phone reports a build number of: 12084.WPMAIN(wpbldlab).20130509-1407 leading some to infer that this version could have been compiled sometime in May. A tease of something to come? As always, hard to tell, but expect the price of second-hand 920s to bump up a little, for the next few weeks at least.
So Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Mini and Galaxy S4 Active have officially made the leap from unimaginative rumors to unimaginative reality, which leaves only one oft-rumored version of the popular smartphone left unaccounted for — the curious S4 Zoom.
As the name sort of implies, this Galaxy variant is said to blur the line between smartphone and camera, and we may now be getting our first look at the thing. A set of images from both SamMobile and TechTastic purportedly show off the photo-centric S4 Zoom ahead of a big Samsung press event in London later this month.
It’s hard to judge from the unflattering angles, but these images depict a device seems to be more camera than phone. The thickish frame, protruding lens obscuring a 16-megapixel sensor, and rounded butt are all design choices that are more reminiscent of point-and-shoots than they are of any standard smartphone. Too bad then that the supposed spec sheet that’s been attached to the S4 Zoom seems wimpy in comparison — that hefty sensor will supposedly be accompanied by a 4.3-inch qHD AMOLED display and a 1.6GHz dual-core processor.
If the S4 Zoom is indeed the real deal — and at this point it just about seems like a lock — Samsung may find that it’s not alone in using smartphones as a platform to show off their camera prowess. Persistent rumors of a Nokia Windows Phone sporting one of the company’s mind-boggling PureView sensors have been floating around for over a year now, and a handful of spurious “leaked” images of one such device (codenamed “EOS “)have been circulating these past days. Hell, just earlier this morning we were treated to what may be the smoking gun — a purported recording of the EOS’ gigantic rear camera pod blinking at us.
In case you missed the PureView hullabaloo from last year, Nokia’s EOS isn’t expected to feature the comparatively puny sensors seen in the company’s recent Windows Phones. No no, rumor has it that it will instead sport the same 41-megapixel camera sensor that first graced the chubby 808 PureView back in 2012.
But I think there’s a bigger question here that hasn’t been adequately answered yet — who do these companies think we’ll buy these things? I suspect I may be in the minority on this one, but I’ve always though that the camera-first approach that some OEMs fiddle around with is just sort of silly. Yes, there’s definite value in being able to capture compelling shots on the run, but really: do people really care how good their photos look once quality inches past a certain threshold?
After all, the way we visually memorialize things has changed since the dawn of smartphone epoch — most images don’t wind up printed and tucked away in photo albums any more. They get hastily MMSed to friends. They get marred by fugly filters and splayed up on Instagram. And in some cases (I’m looking at you Snapchat), the real value of these photos is knowing that they’ll quickly be lost to the ages, a pointed rejection of the archaic permanence of images chemically etched on dead tree material. Camera quality ranks pretty low on my list of criteria when it comes time to buy a new phone, and leaning too heavily on one aspect of a device could be… problematic to say the least.
The closest thing Samsung has had to the S4 Zoom to date is the Galaxy Camera, and the company has never broken out Galaxy Camera sales for we hardware business dorks to dig into. Still, the device was hamstrung by carriers requiring customers to buy a data plan along with the thing (a Wi-Fi version was announced just two months ago). And while Nokia has kept its PureView numbers a closely guarded secret, enthusiasts have estimated that the Finnish phone company managed to sell over half a million as of Fall 2012.
That’s a very solid number considering all the 808′s potential sticking points, and Nokia’s moving a solid number of Lumia phones these days so Nokia must be hoping that PureView and Lumia are two great tastes that really do taste great together. Thankfully, we probably won’t have to wait much longer to see these two duke it out — while the S4 Zoom is expected to be outed this month, the EOS could see the light of day as early as July 9.
Don’t get your hopes up, because the leaked video after the break is one of the most deliberately constrained pieces of camerawork it’s possible to imagine. It avoids showing anything except the mechanical shutter release on the back of a phone that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Nokia EOS photos we covered yesterday, and in fact it comes from @ViziLeaks, who was one of the sources of those images. And, well, that’s pretty much all there is to say about it, except that it adds a further bit of weight to the notion that we might see a new version of the PureView 808 camera (which also had a mechanical shutter) on a Nokia Windows Phone sometime soon.
A new video showing the Nokia EOS PureView smartphone in action – right up close to what’s expected to be a roughly 40-megapixel sensor – has leaked, further stoking enthusiasm about the high-resolution handset. The footage, shared by ViziLeaks, demonstrates the EOS’ shutter and optical image stabilization in action, though the pre-production Windows Phone still
While chat apps excel at adding contacts from the online world, they don’t cope so well with real life — reciting and typing screen names isn’t very elegant. Nokia is bringing back some of those social graces with its Nokia Chat 1.1 beta, which revolves around NFC transfers. If both friends own NFC-equipped Lumia phones, they can tap to exchange their own details, other contacts or even the app itself. It’s also easier to share locations: contacts with Lumias will see a Here Maps-based preview of any given place. These additions don’t make as much sense outside of an all-Nokia ecosystem, but there’s certainly enough for existing users to upgrade at the source link.
We knew Vodafone would be adding the recently unveiled Nokia Lumia 925 to its smartphone lineup in the United Kingdom, but today the carrier’s officially diving into how it plans to sell it to potential suitors. The best attraction would appear to be the all-you-can-have calls / messages with 2GB of data, which will cost you £34 per month over two years. If that particular offering isn’t for you, however, Vodafone UK also has something for those who need a little more web access on the go: £39 for 24 months gets you the same unlimited deal on voice and text but with 4GB of data — and it’s worth mentioning both plans won’t require any cash upfront for the device. The sleek Lumia 925 is set to be up for pre-order starting today, and Vodafone’s really hoping the 32GB black model will be a crucial detail in your decision to go its way instead of, say, O2. So, what will it be?
Nokia’s EOS camera-phone just can’t stay under cover now the leaks have started, with the presumed PureView 41-megapixel smartphone cropping up in a new set of shell photos. The much-rumored handset – tipped to be a Windows Phone 8 device packing the same sort of super-high-resolution sensor as wowed on the 808 PureView – was
Images of an alleged Nokia EOS chassis have leaked from what appears to be a factory, lending some credence to previous rumors of a camera-centric handset from the Finnish outfit. Shots from GSM Arena and others also show what looks like a Nokia Lumia 920, right down to the position of the ports and buttons — but with an enormous camera bump that takes up almost half of the back cover. So far we’ve seen it leak out in yellow, red and black, and if it’s real, looks to be the holy grail that many Nokia lovers have been seeking: a Lumia 920 and Pureview 808 mashup, resulting in a 41-megapixel WP8 handset. All that giddiness aside, such a device could merely be a prototype and will stay a rumor until confirmed by Nokia — meanwhile, you can check the source and coverage links below for many, many more images, and decide for yourself.
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