Hasta La Gadget!

Home ground advantage is something most manufacturers can count on, such as Samsung in South Korea and Blackberry in Canada, but we guess this might not apply for Nokia.

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A Nokia executive has said that Nokia plans on bringing dual-SIM support and a much improved camera technology to Lumia smartphones of the future.

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Nokia‘s push to differentiate its Lumia smartphones with PureView camera technology will see “computational imaging” – where shots can be tweaked and modified thanks to clever lens tech – come to the fore, smart devices chief Jo Harlow has teased. “Being able to capture even more data [is an area of exploration]” Harlow told DNA, “data you cannot even see with the human eye that you can only see by actually going back to the picture and being able to do things with them.” The comments are already being seen as further evidence that array cameras from Nokia-invested Pelican Imaging could show up in Lumia devices sooner rather than later.

Pelican’s system uses 25 lenses and sensors clustered into one block, the results from which can be combined into an image that allows for post-processing from the raw data. That can mean Lytro-style changes in focus, where the focal point of a shot can be altered without demanding that a new image be taken.

Pelican Imaging sensor technology overview:

Alternatively, 3D effects can be introduced, or elements of the image digitally excised without any loss in quality. The Pelican investment joined Nokia’s existing holding in InVisage Technologies, which uses quantum-dot sensors for a fourfold increase in light sensitivity.

Holding back deployment of technology like that Pelican has developed has been the processing power of mobile devices, something both Pelican and Harlow agree is gradually becoming less of an issue. The camera array company’s CEO suggested the first phones to use the tech – not necessarily from Nokia, however – are due to reach the market in 2014, in part because mobile CPU/GPU capabilities can now support that degree of data crunching.

“I think that is a key challenge to bring to the smartphone because computational imagine or computational photography requires computational power” Harlow suggested. “That was one of the limitations in bringing that kind of experiences on a smartphone. Changes in the processing capabilities of smartphones opens it up as an area of exploration.”

Nokia isn’t waiting until it has 25 cameras on the back of every phone before it tries to coax more out of mobile photography, however. The company’s most recent smartphone, the Lumia 925, debuts the new version of the company’s Smart Camera app, which includes features like object-removal, combining elements from multiple images into a single frame, and tweaking the background of images to increase the sense of movement in them.

Nokia Smart Camera demo on the Lumia 925:

As we found during our hands-on with the Lumia 925, there’s still some work to go in finessing the processing experience. Still, it’s an example of how the company is doing more than simply bringing extremely high sensor resolution – such as on the 41-megapixel Nokia 808 – under the PureView umbrella.

Instead, there’ll be a focus on photography as a whole and how Nokia can position its devices as the best-performing camera-phones on the market. That will require consumer education as to what makes a good picture, Harlow conceded when we spoke to her at the Lumia 925 launch earlier this month, but will benefit from goodwill upgrade gestures such as bringing the bulk of the new Smart Camera technologies to the existing Lumia Windows Phone 8 range.

VIA: My Nokia Blog; BGR India

Nokia smartphone chief teases Lytro-style “computational photography” up next is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nokia is attempted to have the HTC One banned from sale in the US, hunting a block on imports over multiple allegations of patent infringement. The ITC legal attack sees six patents join the 44 Nokia has already claimed infringement of by HTC, and includes how internal components are arranged in a unibody device, how signal-to-noise ratio is handled in speech and data, and several elements to do with Google’s Android OS.

For instance, Nokia claims HTC infringes its patent on the video encoding/decoding with Android’s VP8 codec, something FOSS Patents suggests might even force Google to look instead to H.264 which may be more legally palatable. H.264 would involve royalties, but at least avoid wholesale import bans of the sort which Nokia is chasing.

“We began actions against HTC in 2012 to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies” Nokia said in a statement on the newly added patent action. “Since then, despite the German courts confirming infringements of Nokia patents in HTC products, HTC has shown no intention to end its practices; instead it has tried to shift responsibility to its suppliers. We have therefore taken these further steps to hold HTC accountable for its actions.”

Last month, Nokia alleged that the high-amplitude microphone HTC used in the One breached an exclusivity agreement the Finnish firm has with supplier STMicroelectronics. However, despite Nokia’s claims, HTC protested its own ignorance about the existing deal the component maker had, arguing that the injunction did not impact the One.

Back in March, meanwhile, HTC was hit with a German injunction over power saving technologies used by its Qualcomm chipset. The company opted to disable the feature – which it said was “trivial and contributes only a negligible reduction in power-consumption” – as “a precaution against any attempt by Nokia to extend the scope of the judgment unfairly.”

Meanwhile, a second suit filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of California San Diego covers three patents which Nokia also alleges infringement on, by the HTC One and HTC First “Facebook Phone” as well as eight others.

We’ve asked HTC for a comment and will update when we know more.

VIA: AllThingsD; FOSS Patents; ZDNet

Nokia seeks HTC One US import ban with new patent attack is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nokia’s Lumia 925 handset is the first in the Lumia line to feature a metal body, something that some feared would result in issues with its antenna and reception. Addressing those concerns, Nokia has posted a rundown of its antenna design in a blog post today, discussing the steps taken to ensure antenna performance and radio reception wasn’t compromised by the handset’s metal shell.

Nokia states that the metal body of the Lumia 925 does not have any effect on signal reception, that being due to the design, particularly the aluminum ring that circles the handset. The Lumia 925 is equipped with multiple antennas, the main one being installed in the bottom portion of the smartphone, and the other two being near the top.

According to the post, the 925 has “stripes” keeping the antennas separate from portions of the metal ring, with the aluminum band being part of the overall antenna system. On top of it is the implementation of technology designed to balance the power with adjustments that take place based on how the handset is being held.

As such, the maker says that the antenna performance is maximized for all radio bands, whether it is LTE, WCDMA, or GSM, and that the reception experienced is on par with a handset body made entirely of polycarbonate rather than metal. There is a small caveat – Nokia says the signal will be reduced if the user purposely covers all edges of the phone with their hands.

This follows the “antennagate” debacle that Apple was hit with following the iPhone 4′s release, with users experiencing little or no signal if they held the handset wrong. Because of the issue, Apple was hit with a class-action lawsuit, eventually settling the issue with a $53 million settlement after offering a case that would serve as an unwanted bumper between the phone and antenna.

SOURCE: Nokia

Nokia Lumia 925 aluminum ring ensures antenna performance is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.