Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia’s newly appointed Mobile Solutions chief, Anssi Vanjoki, has penned an impassioned post over at Nokia Conversations today where he sets out his perspective on the company’s current position and future challenges. Describing the Finnish phone maker as “a challenger now,” rather than an incumbent, Vanjoki wants to introduce a “laser focus on quality,” with his two central aims being to reclaim Nokia’s reputation for high-end devices and to re-energize a flagging fan base. He specifically namedrops Ricky Cadden — who yesterday shut down Symbian-Guru because he’d lost faith with the company — and clearly considers grassroots support like that an important aspect of how Nokia’s success will be judged.

As to the actual software front, Anssi confirms that the N8 will be the final Symbian^3 handset in the N-Series, but describes a Symbian^4 device in that family as a “strong possibility,” a note which he follows up with a wink (seriously). Symbian is apparently still Nokia’s smartphone OS of choice — no Androids shall be found inside Nokia’s hardware under Anssi’s watch — though MeeGo also earns a mention as the “awesome” platform for delivering “market-changing mobile computers.” Just in case you were wondering, Anssi finishes off by telling us that these wondrous computers will be small enough to fit into your pocket — though, sadly, he fails to specify exactly what sort of pocket that might be.

[Thanks, Peter]

Nokia: the fight begins now, Symbian^4 N-Series device later originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jul 2010 06:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Nokia Conversations  | Email this | Comments

Setting aside the naming confusion, this Nokia prototype procured by Negri Electronics just keeps attracting our attention. Though we saw plenty of it in an earlier video, this latest rendezvous between Finnish hardware and camera lens includes a few familiar suspects to offer us the best size comparison we’ve had so far. Squaring up against a 3.5-inch iPhone 4, the QWERTY slider from Nokia seems barely any larger from the front though quite a bit thicker from the side — an expansion justified by its inclusion of a physical keyboard. It does a lot better when compared to the EVO 4G and the departing iPhone 3GS, looking only marginally chunkier than those keyboard-less devices. Don’t take our word for it though — skip past the break and see for yourself.

P.S. — The UI on this device looks to us a lot more like Symbian^3 than the S60 the narrator believes it’s running, leading us to think that this is most likely a keyboard-equipped variant of the N8.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Nokia (N9 / N8-01?) prototype sized up against iPhone 4 and EVO 4G on video

Nokia (N9 / N8-01?) prototype sized up against iPhone 4 and EVO 4G on video originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  TechnoBuffalo  | Email this | Comments

If Nokia’s N8 is just too much smartphone for you then perhaps you’d like to take it down a notch with the C7. As part of the C-series of Nokia devices, you can expect it to trim some of the specs off the N8, but not much as the flagship device of the family. You know, something very similar to the apparently leaked image and specs (pictured above) we saw a few weeks back. Parsing the XML posted on Nokia’s own site reveals an ARM-based Symbian^3 C7-00 device with a Nokia favorite 360×640 nHD pixel display resolution and 3G UMTS/HSDPA, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios. Obviously no pricing is available but you can expect it to be fairly inexpensive for what you’ll get.

[Thanks, Glen]

Symbian^3 C7 with nHD display confirmed on Nokia’s own site originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Nokia  | Email this | Comments

No folks, those mythical N8 review units still aren’t on our doorsteps, but we can offer you the next best thing: a thorough (we mean thorough) overview of the Symbian^3 environment that will be front and center on Nokia’s next great phone. Eldar Murtazin of mobile-review reports on everything from the sophisticated handling of contacts and caller ID pictures, through the noticeable speed improvements, past the limited utility of online widgets that display only two lines at a time, beyond the “weak spot” web browser, and all the way to Symbian’s unhealthy habit of “clinging to continuity.” It’s an enlightening read, which pulls no punches with its conclusion: Symbian^3 is an evolutionary step up from S60 5th edition, which brings nothing new to the market and offers no comparative advantages. Strong words from Eldar, particularly when he doesn’t disclose what build of the OS he’s using; his rationale, however, is that his analysis relates to overarching design decisions and ignores software bugs and version-specific foibles. Make of that what you will.

[Thanks, scotsboyuk]

Symbian^3 reviewed in exquisite and ruthless detail by Eldar Murtazin originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Jun 2010 06:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  mobile-review  | Email this | Comments

Some two years after its release, there are still plenty of people who’ll swear up and down that the E71 is the finest phone Nokia has ever produced — and for good reason. As a platform, S60 was the product of a simpler time when the smartphone market was dominated not by touchscreens, but by numeric keypads, and the E71 was arguably the last of a string of bona fide successes that Nokia enjoyed in the platform’s heyday alongside pioneering handsets like the N82 and N95. Thing is, the E71 was different than those other models in a very important way: it was elegant. Historically, Nokias have typically favored function over form and saved the highest-quality materials for the Vertu line, but the E71 bucked that trend — it was slim, sexy, chock-full of metal, and curved in all the right places. In fact, to this day, it remains one of the best-looking, best-feeling smartphones ever made.

Customers (and reviewers) made their love for the E71 clear, and Nokia sought to recapture the glory with the introduction of the refined, upgraded E72. For Americans, of course, the biggest problem with the E72 was that you couldn’t buy it from a carrier — and unlike the E71, it never got much traction as an unlocked purchase. That’s where the E73 Mode comes into play, a mildly reworked version of the E72 with T-Mobile branding and, of course, support for 3G on T-Mobile’s AWS bands. Put bluntly, though, this is still just a warmed-over E71 — and in 2010, is there a market for that? Let’s have a look.

Continue reading Nokia E73 Mode review

Nokia E73 Mode review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments