Hasta La Gadget!

A top Nokia exec just confirmed the much-rumored schedule for the next Windows Phone update, codenamed Apollo. Michael Halbherr, Executive VP for Location and Commerce, told us that it’ll launch in mid-2012 and be a “very different game” to Mango — hinting that Apollo actually refers to Windows Phone 8 rather than any mere decimal increment. What do we know about Apollo at this point? Well, not a great deal, but Halbherr also revealed that he’s been pushing Microsoft to integrate NFC and a “positioning framework” to make its mobile OS work better with Nokia’s Navteq mapping platform and thereby provide new location-based services. Sorry HTC, Samsung, but everything points to a more ‘Nokia-fied’ OS.

Update: We’ve spoken with some sources close to Microsoft who indicate that the timing given to us by Nokia is inaccurate. Unfortunately, the truth serum we used wore off before we were provided with a surrogate timeframe, but we’ll of course keep our ears to the ground.

Windows Phone Apollo coming ‘middle of next year,’ says Nokia VP originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a smartphone ecosystem dominated by Apple and Android-based products, Nokia and Microsoft are a lot like those two kids who are always picked last for kickball: They’re clearly in the line-up, but seen as bloated, out-classed choices nobody really wants.

Though Nokia remains the leader in global mobile phone sales, most of those handsets are lower-end “feature” phones, and the company’s market share dropped by close to a third of what it was in 2010. Similarly, Microsoft continues to dominate the desktop software space, but its Windows Phone software holds only 1.6 percent of the global mobile OS share, according to the same Gartner report.

Both Nokia and Microsoft are massive companies with huge economies of scale — and both have the most tenuous of grasps on the burgeoning smartphone market.

However bleak their smartphone fortunes may be, though, Nokia and Microsoft aren’t giving up. This Wednesday, Nokia announced the Lumia 800 and 710, two Windows Phone-powered devices that mark Nokia’s first legitimate forays into the modern smartphone space.

Gone is the near-obsolete MeeGo operating system, and its place is an OS with all of Microsoft’s marketing muscle — not to mention likely synergy with Windows 8, Redmond’s next desktop OS.

So, no, Nokia’s failure in the smartphone space isn’t a fait accompli. But the company will have to rally support around three key initiatives — and this is how I see it all going down.

Focus on Design. And Be Very, Very Different

In its Lumia phones, Nokia is delivering a design sensibility that is markedly different than that of its competitors. Like an item lifted straight off the F.A.O Schwarz showroom floor, the Lumia 800 oozes with child-like whimsy. Wrapped in a polycarbonate casing that comes in a color palette best described as “candy-coated,” the phone stands in stark contrast to the blatantly techie stylings of Android handsets, and the sui generis look-and-feel of Cupertinian design.

It’s a point of differentiation that sets off Nokia from its competitors to an extreme degree, and it’s a well-warranted move. After all, no company can really keep up with Jony Ive’s meticulously designed iOS devices, so Nokia has much more to gain by exploring an completely different design language.

And while there’s a plethora of Android handsets for consumers to choose from, most models lack any real conversation-stopping wow factor. We’ve seen a few close calls — the new Motorola RAZR, for example, is indeed remarkably thin, if not also handsome — but when was the last time people went nuts over an Android phone, just because it was going to be released in a white chassis?

That’s right — never. People don’t buy Android phones for their industrial design.

Which is why the vibrant, bold process colors of the new Lumia 800 should be perfect for capturing consumer eyeballs once the phones hit carrier shelves. “Nokia has shown it can still capture attention with attractive and distinctive hardware,” Ross Rubin, an analyst for NPD Group, told us in an email.

Specs-wise, Nokia’s new Lumia 800 isn’t a dominant piece of hardware. The Qualcomm chip that powers it is a single-core Snapdragon — underwhelming in a smartphone space where dual-core processing is quickly becoming the new baseline. And while the Lumia 800 comes with 16GB of on-board storage, there’s no SD expansion slot, because Nokia wanted to keep the phone’s slick polycarbonate case free of seams and ugly port openings.

But specs are for nerds. Or so the Nokia strategy would seem to state. Android fanatics are the ones who geek out over faster processors, fatter expansion possibilities, and ports galore. Nokia’s target audience just wants a phone that “works great,” the company says.

“There may be devices out there that have faster processors, more memory and what have you, but we have a faster experience,” said Marc Kleinmaier, Nokia senior manager of developer evangelism, in an interview. Kleinmaier added that Nokia and Microsoft worked together to improve hardware/software integration, and the fruits of this labor yielded a phone that performs well beyond what its raw specs may suggest.

Continue reading ‘How Nokia Can Stave Off Smartphone Irrelevance’ …

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Say what you will about Nokia’s smartphone lineup, there’s no arguing the company can coordinate an international press launch. Just mere hours ago, Nokia president Stephen Elop announced his company’s comeback products, the Lumia 710 and 800 smartphones, in London. And now here I sit in Nokia’s Northern California headquarters, enjoying some hands-on time with the new handsets to deliver my quick-and-dirty first impressions.

First off, the Lumia 800 is indeed a doppelganger of the N9 smartphone that I played with last week. But where the N9 comes loaded with the soon-to-be-obsolete MeeGo operating system, the Lumia 800 runs Mango, the latest version of Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS — an OS that Nokia hopes will save its smartphone platform from a slow-burn into irrelevance.

Like a toy made for the child of an industrial design snob, the 800 is elegant, sleek, and a far cry from the company’s clunky 8000 series phones of yesteryear. Just like the N9 that preceded it, the 800 will be available in three shades — cyan, magenta and black. All process colors!

The 800’s slightly-curved 3.7-inch AMOLED display looks fantastic at its 800×480 resolution, just as it did on the N9. Also included is the fantastic Carl Zeiss Optics back-facing camera, capable of snapping gorgeous photos with its f/2.2 lens, and at an especially fast rate.

Under the hood, the 800 runs a single-core 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor backed by 512MB of RAM. Together, the silicon combo kept us smoothly humming through the phone’s menu screens. While Nokia acknowledges there are phones that come equipped with faster, dual-core processors, it says a close relationship with Microsoft throughout development enabled better hardware/software integration, and the phone will perform just as well (if not better) than competitors.

The 800 comes with 16GB of internal storage, but no SD card support. Nokia says this was intentional, to keep the smooth outer polycarbonate shell as eye-pleasing as possible. No cracks, no lines, no unnecessary ports. To mitigate the lack of an SD card slot, Nokia provides 25GB of SkyDrive cloud-based storage with the purchase of the 800.

The star of the show, of course, is the Mango OS. The 800 is the first Nokia device to run Windows Phone 7.5, one of many promised WP7.5-laden handsets to come in 2012. We’ve enjoyed Mango since we first saw it last month. Because the user interface is so drastically different than what we’re used to with Android and iOS, it comes as a refreshing change of pace.

With the Lumia 800, you get most of what you’ve already seen in other Mango-powered Windows Phone models, along with a few added perks. Nokia worked with Microsoft to develop Nokia Drive, a voice-powered turn-by-turn navigation system that works in more than 100 countries, and is exclusive to Lumia phones. There’s also Nokia Maps, which is exactly what it sounds like. Both services were previously unavailable to Windows Phone-powered devices.

Nokia claims up to 13 hours of talk time battery life, with 265 hours of stand-by power, and 55 hours of music playback.

And, yes, there was another Lumia model announced today, the 710. Although the 800 and 710 share many similarities — same 1.4GHz processor, same custom-made Nokia apps like Drive and Maps, same Mango OS — the 710 trails the specs of the 800 in two key areas: Its rear camera is just 5 megapixels (not the 8-megapixel stunner), and onboard storage tops out at 8GB.

Both displays measure 3.7 inches, but the 710’s is a regular-old TFT instead of the 800’s fancy AMOLED. Side-by-side, the two phones reveal markedly different display quality. The 800 is bright and crisp, and makes the 710 seem dull by comparison. If you’re a screen snob, you’ll want to go with the pricier model.

Lastly, the 710 comes with attractive rubberized back covers in five different colors, all of which are interchangeable. That’s not the case for the 800: Once you choose one of the three 800 model colors, you’re sticking with it till your next phone upgrade (for better or worse).

OK, now here’s the really bad news: The phones are currently available for pre-order in Europe only, and won’t arrive stateside until after the holiday season. Nokia reps told us “early 2012,” and they’re shooting for sooner rather than later. No U.S. carriers announced yet, either. Expect the Lumia 800 to cost around $600 retail, while the 710 will cost around $380 (sans contract subsidies, of course).

Nokia fanboys and girls across the British Isles are getting the Lumia 800 love as early as November. Confirmed on a trio of carriers earlier today, Espoo’s “first real Windows Phone” is slated to hit Vodafone, Orange and 3 UK sometime next month, though no specific street date has yet been revealed. You can hit up the operators’ respective sites now to sign-up for the availability updates, or go whole hog with an in-store pre-order in the case of 3 UK. At least one of these networks is sweetening the pot for potential subs, as Orange’s enticing lure of a free Xbox 360 with handset upgrade is sure to reel in bargain hunting customers. So, what are you waiting for? Hit up the source below to hand over your deets and claim your spot in this Finnish Mango queue.

Nokia Lumia 800 hits UK carriers this November, Xbox 360 used as bait originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Finally, here it is. The flagship device Nokia is counting on to bring a smile to our phone-loving faces, a sigh of relief to its shareholders, and a twinkle to the eyes of Finnish tax collectors everywhere. And, guess what? This heavily leaked handset might just live up to our high expectations. From the outside, the Lumia 800 is very similar to our beloved N9. Dubbed the “first real Windows Phone,” this device is powered by a 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 CPU and is sculpted from the same 12.1mm (0.48-inch) thick piece of durable polycarbonate plastic, with tapered edges on the top and bottom to give it that industrial look and make it feel thinner than it really is. Sitting at the top of the device is Nokia’s logo, just above the company’s curved ClearBlack AMOLED (800 x 480) display, with a Carl Zeiss optics-enhanced lens around back. The Lumia 800 also packs 16GB of internal storage, 512MB of RAM and 25GB of free SkyDrive space, and features Nokia Drive, Nokia Music and ESPN Sports Hub baked into its OS. As for that OS, it’s all about a fresh beginning: those bold squares you see on the screen are, of course, the sleek live tiles of Windows Phone Mango.

The eight megapixel camera, meanwhile, packs an f/2.2 aperture, and is designed specifically for low-light environments. It seems pretty similar to what you’ll find in the N9, and according to Nokia, it’s simply a shooter that works for “ordinary people, under ordinary circumstances.” You’ll also find quad-band GSM support, with HSDPA download speeds of up to 14.4Mbps. Now, for the basics: the Lumia 800 is priced at €420, or about $585. It’s already up for pre-order now, and is scheduled to roll out across France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, beginning in November. It’ll make its way to Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the end of the year, and will hit “further markets” sometime next year. Check out a few more pics in the galleries below, or head past the break for a design video, and the official PR. For even more details, check out the Lumia 800 product page, linked below.

Dante Cesa and Sharif Sakr contributed to this report.

Continue reading Nokia announces the Lumia 800, the ‘first real Windows Phone’ (video)

Nokia announces the Lumia 800, the ‘first real Windows Phone’ (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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