Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia’s “around breakeven” outlook announced earlier today is discouraging at best, and now it looks like the company has begun shuttering online stores in response to growing competition from resellers, which offer lower prices on the same hardware. So far, online stores in France and Spain have been replaced with a closure notice, so customers in those countries will need to turn to third-party vendors to get their smartphone fix. European online stores in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, and the UK remain open for business, but low online sales figures (and the inevitable death of Symbian) mean we may see more countries falling offline in the near future. “Prices are too subsidized by the carriers and sales were low, so they will keep providing support,” a representative from Nokia Spain told us today, so as expected, the shutdown only affects sales operations — of course, you’ll still be able to turn to your local Nokia site for support.

[Thanks, Reppu]

Nokia’s online stores go offline in France and Spain originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 17:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While we eagerly await Nokia’s first Mango device, millions of others (we’re told) have been patiently anticipating shipments of the first Symbian Anna smartphones. Well, today’s the day, good sir. Nokia just loosed its 4-inch X7 media slab and E6 portrait QWERTY with 326ppi display into the shipping lanes. Look for the E6 worldwide while the X7 will skip the US carriers (as expected) targeting the friendlier Symbian climates of Europe, Eurasia, China, India and other countries around AsiaPac. Huzzah?

Nokia X7 and E6 Symbian Anna phones start shipping into obsolescence originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 03:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When you’ve got an OS in the final throes of life, your choices for stimulating interest are a little limited. Having exhausted the usual avenues of introducing pink and gold-plated versions of its older phones, Nokia is now resorting to the mobile industry’s standby marketing crutch: poking fun at Apple. Its latest ad campaign in India features the tagline iDoalotmore, which takes a rather overt shot at Apple’s iPhone and general tendency to preface its wares with an “i.” Sadly, there are no spec-for-spec smackdowns over on the accompanying promo site, but you can learn all about Symbian’s excellent features and radically new rounded icons. Or are they iCons now?

Continue reading Nokia: iDoalotmore talking about Symbian than a zombie OS deserves

Nokia: iDoalotmore talking about Symbian than a zombie OS deserves originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 May 2011 08:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So the MeeGo Conference is winding down here in San Francisco and we have prowled the exhibitor area over the past couple of days to bring you a taste of what’s stimulated our eyes and ears at the event so far. We got to play with the Indamixx 2 music tablet — basically an iiView M1Touch Pine Trail tablet running an audio-optimized build of MeeGoo 1.2 Tablet UX, which features a customized kernel for more real-time control and better audio scheduling. It’s expected to ship for $700 in “June or July” complete with DAW and DJ apps.

Next we came across a MeeGo-based in-vehicle entertainment system that’s currently available in cars from Chinese manufacturer Hawtai Motor. The device is Atom-powered, includes 3G connectivity, and provides navigation, communication, audio / video playback (for both stored and streamed content), along with Internet access. We saw a MeeGo app that gathers contact information on a form, sends it to an NFC-equipped Nokia C7, and writes it to a blank RFID tag. The tag can then be read by any NFC-capable phone, such as Google’s Nexus S.

A fun conference isn’t complete without some games, and we were treated to a homebrew, QML-based Dance Dance Revolution clone running on MeeGo, written using just a few hundred lines of code. Speaking of QML, we got a demo of another in-vehicle entertainment system with built-in instrumentation. This MeeGo app was designed to interface with a MegaSquirt open source ECU and display engine and other car data on a set of virtual gauges — this in addition to performing the usual audio and navigation tasks. Check out our gallery below, then grab a snack and hit the break for our 15-minute hands-on video.

Continue reading MeeGo Conference 2011 sights and sounds (video)

MeeGo Conference 2011 sights and sounds (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 May 2011 09:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia has noted Microsoft’s announcement of the new Windows Phone 7 (aka Mango) with word that the software being demonstrated today will be the one we’ll see on the first Nokia with Windows Phone device. That’s singular, not plural, indicating that Nokia will likely start off with one phone and work its way up. It also slightly contracts the roadmap for the first handset born from the Microkia partnership, though Nokia’s statement makes sure not to make any promises about when said device will show up. Finally, we find the “Nokia with Windows Phone” phrasing somewhat peculiar, don’t be surprised if you see it turn into a branding strategy for Nokia’s smartphones going forward. Here’s the relevant statement, straight out of Finland:

“Today Microsoft has announced the key new ingredients of the latest ‘Mango’ release of the Windows Phone operating system. This is the software that will be used on the first Nokia with Windows Phone device, and so should be of keen interest to Nokia-watchers everywhere.”

Update: Microsoft just concluded its keynote with word that it already has Nokia phones running Mango in its labs. And none have leaked out yet, amazing!

Update 2: We were just contacted by a Nokia representative indicating that there was a mistake in the original announcement the company distributed. It wasn’t supposed to read device, it was supposed to be devices. More than one!

Update 3: Nokia’s Executive VP of Smart Devices, Jo Harlow, has told Forbes that the forthcoming “small portfolio” of phones — which are currently on target for a 2011 release — won’t look like the renderings we’ve seen before. Not only that, we may see a CDMA Nokia handset at some point, as the company is “working in that direction.”

Windows Phone ‘Mango’ will be used on first Nokia WP devices (updated: multiple!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 20:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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