Hasta La Gadget!

Starting today, Nokia is beginning to roll out its own update to Lumia devices working with Windows Phone 8, one that brings about a wide range of improvements to key elements inside the phones lucky enough to get it. With Amber, Nokia devices will be gaining boosts in software that build upon Microsoft’s own most […]

If you bought a Nokia Lumia device in the past 6 months and were wondering if there were an easier way to transfer photos to your OS X machine than the already in-play Windows Phone app, lucky you: today there is. What you’re looking at here is Nokia Photo Transfer for Mac, an extremely simple […]

Nokia’s EOS PureView camera has cropped up in the wild again, now getting up close comparison-style with the Lumia 920 and showing just how little has changed from the front of the Windows Phone, at least. The new image, shared by perennial EOS tipster ViziLeaks, shows that the two handsets are largely identical, though the

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Nokia Lumia 920 users tempted by the improved lens of the Lumia 925 and the new Windows Phone’s broader ISO support should probably hold off before they trade in, with Nokia’s photograpy chief Juha Alakarhu promising an incoming update will significantly narrow the gap between the phones. While all eyes are on the new Lumia 925 today, Nokia has a pleasant surprise for existing 920 owners, with confirmation that the Amber update due this summer will bring many of the improvements to the older device. Meanwhile, Alakarhu also explained why Nokia’s burst-photo system is better than, say, HTC’s Zoe approach, and why the Finnish firm would be happy to work on making it better.

Amber has already been confirmed to include the Smart Camera app, which brings effects like Motion Focus, Action Shots, and other burst-image-related trickery to the Lumia 925. However, Alakarhu also told us that Amber will expand the supported ISO range of the Lumia 920, just as the 925 comes with support for out of the box.

Nokia Smart Camera hands-on:

Currently, the Lumia 920 tops out at ISO 800; with Amber installed, that will be quadrupled to ISO 3200. The result will be better low-light shots as well as improvements in sports photography and when snapping images of moving subjects.

It’s not only the old flagship which will get a photography polish after Amber. All of Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 line-up will get the newest version of the photo engineers’ algorithms, which will help increase sharpness – particularly in cropped shots, Alakarhu explained – and lower noise, in addition to improvements in exposure. There’ll also be support across the range for remapping the camera shortcut key to the Smart Camera app, instead of the Windows Phone default.

Not all of the Lumia models will see the same degree of improvement, of course. Nokia will adjust the level of tweaking depending on the core sensor; the Lumia 520, for instance, won’t attempt ISO 3200 shots, since the hardware really isn’t up to it. A final decision on what changes will be delivered to each device is yet to be reached, with Alakarhu’s team still working on that ahead of Amber’s expected release in July.

The speed at which Smart Camera clusters of shots open up – something we found to take around 15 seconds with Nokia’s current pre-production software on the 925 – will also be improved, though the photo team couldn’t tell us exactly how fast the process will become. Although it’s slower than how quickly, say, HTC’s One can open up a Zoe set, there’s a good reason for that.

One of our ongoing criticisms of the One is how much space Zoe photography takes up, both on the smartphone itself and in the cloud. Nokia has addressed that by packaging the ten stills together, rather than storing each as an individual frame; the end result doesn’t follow the “ten shots so 10x the size” explanation you might expect, Alakarhu explained. Opening and editing those takes some processing time – in fact, it’s currently the most processor-intensive thing the Lumia 925 is asked to do – but while there are other ways Nokia could deal with the files, the company is wary of diverging too greatly from imaging standards.

“I think what we want to do next is make the sharing super-easy, so that your friends can also enjoy making those changes on Facebook or their own phone” Alakarhu told us. “And so we need to find the right format, the right way to do it. There is currently no industry standard for doing that, and I don’t want to take the proprietary route for doing that, because this needs to be accessed by everyone.”

Exactly how that common format might look is unclear. HTC has opted for Zoe Share, a free – albeit temporary – web-gallery service that One owners can use to show off select stills, video clips, and highlight reels created on the smartphone. Nokia currently has no specific sharing system that preserves the Smart Camera post-processing potential, though you can of course push out the final results as regular photos through the usual Facebook, Twitter, email, and other routes.

“In the 920, we actually did a lot of the foundations” Alakarhu concluded, hinting that there was plenty more photo-centric news to be shared later in the year. “The algorithms we had have, for example. But now we have been able to do that optimization, and the pace of the development has been incredible now that we have that great foundation of algorithms.”

Got a Nokia Lumia 920? Give Amber a try before you upgrade to 925 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Windows Phone has always been left out of the mobile wars, with iOS and Android mainly taking center stage and fighting in the ring. However, Microsoft is using that to their advantage with their latest Windows Phone television ad. The ad pokes fun at the constant iOS vs. Android war by basically saying that you don’t need to fight with other users if you’re using Windows Phone.

The ad takes place at a wedding, where everyone in the audience naturally pops out their smartphones (and tablets, in one instance) to take a picture of the moment. However, this leads to name-calling and sarcastic taunts to other guests. Obviously, an all-out fight ensues as people argue over what the better mobile platform is, while Windows Phone users casually stand there using their Nokia Lumia 920 devices.

Microsoft feeds off of the oft-forgotten mobile platform in the mobile wars, and uses that to their advantage, touting that if you have a Windows Phone device, there’s no need to argue over which mobile platform is the best, because Microsoft argues that you have the best in your hand in the first place.

It seems that more and more companies are aiming their sights at competitors and downplaying the features on these devices rather than market their own products and demo some of the features on their own smartphones and tablets. We get that Microsoft thinks they’re not included in the mobile wars because they’re already the best, but they fail to really list why they’re the best.

Windows Phone ad pokes fun at iOS vs. Android war is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.