Hasta La Gadget!

Most talk of a Nokia Lumia for Verizon has been relegated to small-scale rumors and incidental CDMA references. Nokia’s Worldwide Developer Relations head Richard Kerris has rather suddenly brought the elusive subject into focus through an interview: he tells Neowin that it “won’t be long” before the can-you-hear-me-now network gets a taste of an experience that has previously been limited to the GSM side of the US telecom world, like AT&T and T-Mobile. We’re not getting a roadmap for any Verizon devices just yet, to no one’s surprise, but Kerris is more than willing to share when we can expect the next wave of Nokia devices. We should expect a refresh of the line sometime in the fall, and whatever’s arriving in the spring will purportedly be good enough to have people “climbing over themselves” to get it — just in case Nokia’s role as a Windows Phone 8 partner for the fall launch and beyond wasn’t clear enough. The question-and-answer session touches on a handful of other subjects, including a hint that the near-mythical Windows Phone with PureView may be a bit closer to reality, so click on through if you’d like a peek at where the Lumia is headed next.

Nokia: it ‘won’t be long’ before Verizon gets its due, and we’ll have more gear in the fall originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Jul 2012 10:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s nothing easier to photoshop than a phone display, but a Nokiapoweruser reader claims to have RDA screenshots leaking five (count ’em) different upcoming Nokia smartphones. The reputed models shown — without any other proof — are the Nokia 510, Nokia Belle 805 and Lumias 920, 950 and 1001. These are on top of another we already saw from the same type of source, the Nokia 910, giving us a Bizarro world view of Nokia’s entire possible WP8 lineup, before the company has even issued a peep. We’d love to ruminate about potential specs and pecking order, but since we’re talking about an entirely abstract slate of phones, go ahead and invent your own.

[Image credit: Nokiapoweruser]

A bevy of Nokias allegedly leak into a developer app: ‘Lumia 1001’ tops theoretical new lineup originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Jul 2012 06:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia may not be in quite as much trouble as RIM, but the company is still facing difficulties in the current smartphone climate. Richard Kerris, VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, had a sit down with Neowin for an interview that detailed some of Nokia’s plans going forward. There may be some out there who want to use a Nokia Windows Phone in the United States but don’t want to join AT&T or T-Mobile to do so, and Kerris confirmed that Nokia devices would be coming to other carriers including Verizon, saying that “it won’t be long.”

That’s the only teaser that Kerris gave, with no other indication of when exactly we can expect to see Nokia’s Windows Phones on other networks. Kerris also reaffirmed that Nokia was working on bringing the PureView technology found on the 808 to future Windows Phone handsets, saying that those products would be coming “very soon.”

Other details in the interview included Windows Phone 8. Kerris believes that carriers will offer attractive upgrade options to make people jump to the next version of the OS. AT&T and Nokia introduced the Lumia 900 in the United States with a $100 price point, so prices along those lines may not be out of the question for future devices.

Nokia also filed for more patents last year than any other year in the company’s history. Currently Nokia holds around 30,000 patents, with 10,000 of those active. On top of that, the company has been focusing on research and development, resulting in concepts like the Kinetic Labs flexible smartphone that Nokia is trying to turn into a feasible product. Kerris ends the interview saying that Nokia will innovate its way out of the current predicament, with new products coming this Fall.

Verizon Nokia Windows Phones plus PureView Lumias “very soon” is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With Windows Phone 8′s launch fast approaching, it not exactly a surprise to hear that Nokia is slaving away on some new hardware. The Nokia Lumia 910 — which some suspect is a Lumia 900 meant for T-Mobile USA — was recently spotted thanks to Nokia’s Remote Device Access service, but that’s not all the Finnish company seems to have in the works.

A new device called the Nokia Lumia 1001 was also detected by one of Nokia’s remotely-accessible phones, and its significant model number jump could mean it’s the company’s first Windows Phone 8 device. Or does it?

If you’ve never had the chance to play with Remote Device Access it allows users to connect to a whole host of Nokia hardware from within a browser window. It’s ostensibly meant for developers to test their applications and code on real (if distant) hardware, but it also provides an occasionally neat glimpse into what Nokia is working on. Take the Lumia 900 for instance — then referred to as the “Nokia 900 Windows Phone,” its existence was detected by a device being controlled remotely late last year.

It’s worth noting though that devices like the Lumia 910 and 1001 aren’t directly accessible to users — instead, they’re spotted when a user commands one of Nokia’s devices to search for other Bluetooth-enabled devices nearby.

I was initially able to spot the Lumia 1001 (see above) while I was poking around with a Nokia 500. Just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, I jumped into a different device (the Nokia N9, if you were curious) to see if the device in question was still hanging around.

At this point, there’s no way to discern any of the device’s particulars or even if it’s a real handset. Considering the sort of attention that the RDA service has been getting lately, it’s entirely possible that someone at Nokia has a sense of humor and changed one of the device’s names to “Nokia Lumia 1001″ just to mess with all of us.

That being said, there’s little question that Nokia is working on some Windows Phone 8 hardware behind closed doors, in preparation for the platform’s launch later this year. Longtime readers may also remember that Nokia switched to a “larger-is-better” numerical naming scheme last year, with their most premium handsets getting high model numbers.

So far, Nokia’s Lumia 900 sits at the top of the heap, but with Windows Phone 8 barreling down the pipeline, it wouldn’t be surprise to see Nokia bump up their model numbers for their newest breed of Windows Phones. After all, the existing version of Windows Phone is being left behind in favor of a more powerful, unified platform — one would imagine they would use a much loftier model number (not unlike “1001″) to signify that transition.

Seldom has the smartphone divide looked so broad. HTC‘s financial results for the last quarter, revealed earlier today, puts the company in with struggling Nokia and RIM, an ocean away from the cash-stacked Apple and Samsung. Having already posted one appalling quarter this year, HTC missed market expectations and posted another year-on-year slump in profit, as the One Series failed to set consumers alight in the way the company had hoped.

HTC hasn’t confirmed specific sales performance for each of the One Series models – and it’s unlikely to, for that matter – but with the bulk of consumer attention seemingly taken by the Samsung Galaxy S III and the whispers of Apple’s iPhone 5, it’s clear the trio didn’t do enough to tun the firm around in the way it was predicted to. Apple can share some of the blame there, though we don’t imagine the company will be feeling particularly contrite; an import ban in the US kept key HTC phones from shelves, until it could hurriedly rework software to suit.

Still, apathetic consumers and litigious rivals don’t give HTC a pass on what it might have done to better position itself in the cut-throat mobile marketplace. From being the poster-child of Android innovation to seeing its phones described as the “you might also consider” option, HTC could’ve turned the tide if it had wised up to what it could change and been realistic about what it couldn’t.

Samsung and Apple – the two companies really succeeding today – have something in common: each has a strong hand on the hardware supply chain. Apple does that by collaborating with suppliers and hurling fistfuls of cash; Samsung pretty much owns its own supply chain (and is in some cases the supplier being showered with Cupertino dollars) and has first pick of the innovation spoils.

“HTC is reliant on other for key parts of its range”

In contrast, HTC is reliant on others for most key parts of its range. Its chipsets and displays are made by third-parties; Windows Phone and Android are controlled by Microsoft and Google respectively. Unlike Samsung, which took a stand in the US with the Galaxy S III and said “no more needless customization” to the carriers, HTC hasn’t quite been able to break free from the (expensive and time consuming) obligations of creating needless differences in models for different networks.

Meanwhile, HTC has neglected many of the areas in which it could have seized control. It sensibly pared back the aesthetic overload of Sense, its customized Android skin, but shuttered the companion cloud service just as rivals were building out their online backbone. Back in March, HTC said its newly renovated HTCSense.com would be along soon to replace the closed service, but three months on there’s still not a whisper of what the company intends.

What it does have still active, meanwhile, is under-utilized. HTC Watch, the streaming movie service, could’ve been HTC’s answer to iTunes, but it’s little more than another app on the launcher; there’s no “three free rentals!” promo to lure users into signing up, and the potential integration between it and HTC’s Media Link HD has been ignored in retail. HTC pushed ahead with Beats headphones bundles (while failing to do the obvious there, too, and use the music focus to push downloads from the preloaded MP3 store) when it could have paired its phones with the Media Link HD and encouraged buyers to spend on video content too.

Meanwhile, although Sony is grabbing headlines in the past week with its Gaikai buy, HTC could’ve been driving mobile gaming courtesy of its OnLive investment since last year. The HTC Flyer arrived with an OnLive app, for cloud gaming, but since then has singularly failed to do anything meaningful with it. At the same time, Apple has seen exponential growth in iPhone gaming; now HTC has apparently given in on OnLive altogether, and thrown in with Sony and PlayStation Certification.

“There’s a glaring omission in HTC’s line-up: tablets”

Finally, there’s the glaring omission in HTC’s product line-up: any sort of legitimate tablet competition to the iPad. The Flyer flopped; the larger Jetstream that followed it proved simply too expensive, despite looking prescient today given its pen input option. Since those two devices, however, HTC tablet development has apparently gone dry. Mutterings of a Windows model persist, but right now there’s an entire segment of the mobile ecosystem that HTC has no footprint in.

Still, there are glimmers of hope. HTC’s image processing technology – something the company has taken a hand in developing for the One Series – has rightly been praised, and the company is at least avoiding the scattershot range of screen sizes that it desperately fired out in 2011. The HTC Connect system looks like a step in the right direction too. What we’ve seen of Sense 4.0 so far is certainly the best its been in a few generations, and HTC already has many of the key user-experience elements to-hand; now it needs to tie them together.

Unlike others, HTC’s Q2 results at least showed movement in the right direction. The most recent quarter was bad, sure, but not as bad as the three months before it. Now, HTC needs to double-down on another small clutch of well-crated handsets, preferably getting them to market before the iPhone 5 arrives. Turning the company around won’t be easy, but as Nokia and RIM have discovered, there’s little room for second-chances in today’s mobile world.

HTC’s Precipice Moment is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.