Aug 17

Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type puts a touchscreen on your Series 40 featurephone

Posted in: bluetooth, nokia, symbian, Today's Chili, touch, touchscreen, video, wifi

Nokia has just revealed its X3-02 handset, which does the unthinkable and marries a relatively standard 16-button keypad with a 2.4-inch QVGA touchscreen. Now, we might have our reservations about Nokia’s S40 OS being able to translate to a touch-friendly UI, but the beauty of this phone is that touch comes as essentially a free extra rather than the fundamental navigation paradigm. It’s augmented with 3G, 802.11n WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, and the whole thing is wrapped within a 9.6mm-thin brushed aluminum shell. All that, and the X3-02 will only cost €125 (before sales taxes and subsidies, as usual) when it launches later this quarter. See it on video after the break.

Update: Nokia has informed us the X3-02 uses a resistive touchscreen, no real surprise given its price.

Gallery: Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type press pics

Continue reading Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type puts a touchscreen on your Series 40 featurephone

Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type puts a touchscreen on your Series 40 featurephone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 12

Gartner and IDC agree: the Android invasion’s accelerating around the world

Posted in: Android, Apple, Google, HTC, ios, LG, market, market share, marketshare, motorola, nokia, RIM, samsung, smartphone, Smartphones, Sony Ericsson, SonyEricsson, stats, symbian, Today's Chili, Windows Mobile, WindowsMobile

Last quarter we reported on some pretty stellar growth numbers for Android in the global smartphone marketplace. Back then, Google’s OS had a 9.6 percent slice of the pie, but today that’s ballooned to a robust 17.2 percent, meaning that in terms of end-user sales over the last three months, Android has nearly matched RIM’s BlackBerry sales. That’s quite the feat when you consider that a year ago the latter was shifting ten times more units than the former. This extraordinary growth rate has narrowed down Symbian’s lead at the top, in spite of Nokia’s favorite OS actually shipping on more phones this year, while the big loser of the quarter has to be Windows Mobile, which contracted both in terms of market share and actual shipments.

Overall, smartphone sales were up by 50 percent year-on-year, according to both Gartner and IDC, while Gartner adds that mobile devices as a whole grew at a tamer 13.3 percent pace. In terms of phone manufacturers’ global share, Nokia and Samsung have held on to their top positions, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have experienced some uncomfortable shrinkage, and HTC, RIM and Apple have capitalized to expand their portions. Looking over to IDC’s smartphone share data shows, again, that all smartphone makers are growing remarkably well, but it does highlight HTC (129 percent) and Samsung (173 percent) as really improving their presence in the sector. The reason? Android, Android, Android.

Continue reading Gartner and IDC agree: the Android invasion’s accelerating around the world

Gartner and IDC agree: the Android invasion’s accelerating around the world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 09

Nokia 5250 set to replace the 5230, turn the ugly dial down from 10 to 6?

Posted in: nokia, rumor, symbian, Today's Chili

It wasn’t that long ago that T-Mobile USA launched Nokia’s venerable 5230 as the Nuron, but you’ve got to admit — with a mug only a mother could love, Nokia owed it to itself to get cracking on a prettier replacement. On that note, we’ve got a shot of an alleged model 5250 today, sporting the same button configuration as the 5230; considering the gargantuan bezel, we’re figuring on a smallish screen, which points to the low end of the touchscreen spectrum — right where a proper 5230 successor would belong. Thing is, we’d figured Nokia was moving away from the four-digit naming convention for its smartphones altogether — in other words, we’d expect this new device fit somewhere between the C5 and C6 — so it’s unclear whether this is real and represents a current, non-canceled model in the product pipeline. It’s not going to turn any heads, of course — but if Nokia were able to push this for something crazy like $120 off contract, it’d be hard to ignore.

Nokia 5250 set to replace the 5230, turn the ugly dial down from 10 to 6? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aug 05

Nokia’s app development strategy: Qt, Qt, Qt (video)

Posted in: app, apps, developers, meego, nokia, symbian, Today's Chili, video

Been wondering about Nokia’s strategy for conquering the rapidly expanding app space? Great! So were we, which is why we joined up with a recent dev event carried out by the Finnish company for an update on how and where things are going. It’s a familiar narrative by this point: Qt is all set to become the way that Nokia-friendly apps are made — whether it be for Symbian smartphones or MeeGo-powered mobile computers, coffee machines or infotainment consoles. Nokia did stress that its developer workflow has also been streamlined dramatically, and promised coders a better distilled experience that treats their time and money like the valuable commodities that they are. It’s an encouragingly frank discussion of where things have gone wrong in the past and how Espoo intends to remedy them in the future, and we’ve got it all on video for you after the break — no reading required!

Continue reading Nokia’s app development strategy: Qt, Qt, Qt (video)

Nokia’s app development strategy: Qt, Qt, Qt (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Aug 2010 06:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 29

Nokia N8 up for official €469 pre-order in Italy, available in September

Posted in: nokia, pre-order, PreOrder, sales, symbian, Today's Chili

Nokia’s Symbian^3 flagship — the 3.5-inch N8 with 12 megapixel camera — just went up for pre-order on Espoo’s Italian storefront showing an end of September availability. Now before you get up in arms about the €469 price tag (about $610), remember, the €370 estimated retail price announced was pre tax and pre carrier subsidy. That’s just how Europe does things, deal with it. We’re not seeing the preorder available elsewhere but we’ll update you if that situation changes.

[Thanks, Faisal]

Nokia N8 up for official €469 pre-order in Italy, available in September originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 24

Adobe Air peer-to-peer video call concept Android app hands-on (video)

Posted in: adobe, Android, BlackBerry, exclusive, hands-on, nokia, palm, RIM, symbian, Today's Chili, video, webos

If you recall, a few days ago we stumbled upon a cheekily-named concept app (which has since been renamed for obvious reasons) from Adobe that does video-calling on Android. This is pretty rad considering it’s just Qik and Fring offering the same service for the green bot right now, so we trotted along to Adobe’s London office to get a closer look at this demo. As with many things in life, not all went as planned as you can see after the break — the video stream froze up on several occasions, but then again Adobe’s Mark Doherty only spent three days cooking this simple app. Regardless, this should still help Android developers understand the beefed-up peer-to-peer capabilities in the forthcoming Air 2.5 runtime, which is now “feature-complete” and undergoing extensive testing ahead of launch later this year.

Things are less positive for Flash availability on other mobile platforms, though. While Nokia’s just waiting for a Linux SDK before it can start porting Flash apps to its devices within 2010, Adobe implied that it’s still waiting for two other vendors to respond — Palm’s already been shown a Flash build running on webOS devices, and it’s just a matter of the company signing up for Adobe’s device certification system; RIM, on the other hand, is a bit more vague, but we were told it’s definitely interested in both Air and Flash. And here’s the surprise of the day: no comment on Flash for iOS (not to be confused with its digital publishing tools for the iPad), but there’s no stopping you from hacking it in yourself.

Continue reading Adobe Air peer-to-peer video call concept Android app hands-on (video)

Adobe Air peer-to-peer video call concept Android app hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 17

First real Symbian^4 screen shots emerge

Posted in: symbian, Today's Chili

We’d argue that the “wow” factor still isn’t there quite yet, but we’ll admit: Symbian^4 is clearly going to be a bit of a departure from the versions that came before it. The Symbian Foundation has posted the first handful of home screen UI shots on its developer wiki recently showing redesigned widgets, app categories and search, pop-up menus, and a standard-issue numeric touchscreen keypad — and unlike Nokia’s concept videos from before, these are from a real emulator running real code. While MeeGo is still expected to dominate the high end of its range, Nokia’s expecting to use Symbian^4 in at least some of its devices by early 2011 — and knowing how these guys like to go big with global roll-outs spanning tens or hundreds of millions of devices, this is a UI you might end up getting to know extremely well within a year or two.

First real Symbian^4 screen shots emerge originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 02:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 13

Gartner: Symbian is ‘re-arranging the deck chairs,’ losing buoyancy fast

Posted in: mobile os, MobileOs, nokia, symbian, Today's Chili

We all know that Symbian is still holding the fort as the globe’s most widely used mobile OS, but anyone interested in criticizing it nowadays will have to get into a queue. Nick Jones from Gartner is latest to launch a broadside against the apparently complacent market leader, opining that its user experience has been surpassed by iOS and Android, and arguing that future iterations do not promise enough innovation to make the platform stand out. He underpins these observations with his firm’s latest estimates, which indicate Symbian’s decline in share is accelerating, before positing the idea that the Foundation sets aside some talent for skunkworks projects in order to give itself fallback options should Symbian^4 not be blindingly marvelous. Nick might be going a little overboard with the bleakness of his outlook, but there’s no questioning his “Android iceberg” analogy — if Symbian doesn’t find the right course soon, Google might well end up collecting a big chunk of its exasperated users.

Gartner: Symbian is ‘re-arranging the deck chairs,’ losing buoyancy fast originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 06

HTC Gold with Windows Phone 7 in November, and more from a rumored UK roadmap leak

Posted in: BlackBerry, HTC, leak, leaks, Microsoft, nokia, research in motion, ResearchInMotion, RIM, roadmap, rumor, rumors, samsung, Sony Ericsson, SonyEricsson, symbian, Today's Chili, windows phone, windows phone 7, WindowsPhone, WindowsPhone7, Wp7, xperia

O, to see what Omio sees. The outlet has obtained what it claims to be “a huge UK mobile phone release schedule for the rest of the year… [from] all the manufacturers” (emphasis its own). So, from where would such an all-encompassing roadmap hail? We don’t know, nor can we corroborate any of this, but the details are numerous so let’s go through it — albeit with cautious optimism and a few grains of salt. The biggest phone we can see of this baker’s dozen of a lineup is the HTC Gold (sound familiar?), due in November and loaded with Microsoft’s mobile OS newcomer Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately, that’s all the information provided, but it’s certainly enough to entice us. Also in November, we’ve got Samsung i8700 and Nokia E7 — the latter being possibly a N8-esque QWERTY slider with AMOLED display and Symbian^3, and the former being a mystery (although Omio takes a gander that its aquatic Greek mythology might suggest a Bada-powered existence).

Going up the list Memento style, October purportedly brings across the pond-ers HTC Vision, the virtually unknown HTC Ace, Nokia N8, and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X8 and Yendo. September’s a bit of a yawner — SE Hazel and a Nokia X2 candybar — as is August with the X6 8GB and BlackBerry Curve 9300. And July? Nokia E5-00, Sony Ericsson W20, and Samsung i5500. As is usually the case, the more you can wait, the better your options. Now, let’s see if this supposed roadmap stays on course.

HTC Gold with Windows Phone 7 in November, and more from a rumored UK roadmap leak originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 03

Mystery Nokia slider shows off proto-Symbian^3 one last time, commits cellular suicide (video)

Posted in: in the wild, InTheWild, nokia, symbian, Today's Chili

We never did quite get the name of Nokia’s prototype slider — it certainly isn’t the C7, and it’s apparently not the N9 — but regardless of what you call our dearly departed, its journey is over. In what will no doubt be a fairly familiar tale to readers everywhere, TechnoBuffalo saw the phone remotely wiped right before their eyes, and Negri Electronics (our original source) says they’ve got private investigators breathing down their necks for the device. Stalwart to the bitter end, RM-626 gave one last performance before it dropped. See the 4-inch handset play an embedded YouTube video after the break if you must, but be sure to stop at the 5:45 mark. For true phone lovers, the rest is too painful to watch.

[Thanks, Larry N.]

Continue reading Mystery Nokia slider shows off proto-Symbian^3 one last time, commits cellular suicide (video)

Mystery Nokia slider shows off proto-Symbian^3 one last time, commits cellular suicide (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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