Very early bird rumours I’d call this, but it’s still a good read. Apparently Eldar Murtazin, the forever anti-Nokia guy, claims to have the inside scoop on Nokia’s current Windows Phone device plans while getting an early hands-on with a prototype.
According to him, Nokia currently has two prototypes in their labs, while they have a long roadmap of Windows Phone handsets ready for 2012. The naming scheme is simply following the existing lineup of Nokia, with a prototype that is based on the X7 hardware named as W7, and a W8 prototype based on the current cameraphone N8.
According to Eldar, all of Nokia’s WP prototypes are built upon Qualcomm chipsets per Microsoft’s requirement (and Nokia’s dismay). The W7 model is currently being used in-house for development purposes and will likely be the first to market, according to Eldar, with an 8 megapixel autofocus camera and flash. Murtazin claims that the W7 reminded him of the HTC Mozart without any noticeable customizations to the OS.
Of course, we’re barely going through the 1st quarter of 2011, so this is still not valid at the moment. Who knows what we’ll see in 2012. Maybe a quad-core ARM processor with hyper-threading?
After a long time letting BlackBerry reign in the QWERTY portrait smartphone sector, Nokia finally announce a successor to their mighty E71/E72 smartphones that used to be very popular among the business-centric-crowd. This new E6 tout awesome battery life, with up to a month of standby time, features both a touchscreen and a portrait QWERTY keyboard. A VGA resolution on a 2.46-inch display equals 326ppi. What’s more, it’s getting the new lovely ‘Anna’ running in its kitchen. It’s shipping in the 2nd quarter.
The N8, E7, C7 and C6-01, the phones that ran what was formerly known as Symbian^3, will all be getting it “over the coming months,” while the newly announced X7 and E6 devices will ship with it preloaded.
And the changes? Real homescreen scrolling, an overhauled browser, and even a QWERTY onscreen keyboard in portrait orientation. Looks like they’ve done their homework. There’s also new iconography and heavily refreshed Ovi Maps, which now include predictive search. Nokia is resolute in its belief that Ovi Maps is the best mapping solution on the market, and Microsoft’s decision to integrate it into Bing would suggest that’s true.
The “Anna” Symbian update will be the first of a series and has been driven almost entirely by consumer feedback. Nokia also shared some Ovi Store stats with us. There are now five million downloads per day going on from the company’s app repository, which now includes more than 40,000 apps in total. 158 developers have passed a million downloads each.
Ever thought of a smartphone that’s capable of dual-booting into Symbian AND Windows 7? Yes, I see your nerd face smirking, and it seemed that the Japanese are going to make your wish granted.
I’m not sure which is the main course and which is the side dish, but Fujitsu and DoCoMo has teamed up to unleash a dual-boot device that can boot into the desktop-version Windows 7 and Symbian, just at a flip of the switch!
It appears that this thing will be called the L00X F-07C for the moment, and will come with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a four-inch 1024 x 600 display, and an Intel Atom CPU. Will this be powered by the new Oak Trail Atom? What’s more, there’s a 32GB SSD in it! Talk about monster smartphone.
Yes, it’s finally official. The Nokia X7 has been launched by Nokia, and will be available from Three in the UK. The stainless steel handset runs an updated Symbian^3 “Anna” (aka, PR2) OS that finally introduces a vastly improved browser and portrait QWERTY with split-view data entry among its 50 new enhancements that Nokia hope will restore abit of the Symbian’s glory.
Slightly less biffed up than the N8, the X7 will have an 8 megapixel cam with dual-LED flash that’s capable of 720p video recording, 4-inch OLED ClearBlack display, HD video recording, and 256MB RAM / 1GB ROM with an 8GB memory card tossed in the box.
What’s powering this stainless steel baby is a somewhat slow and very old 680MHz (ARM-11) processor that is identical with the N8 and E7. Right, when everyone’s running either a 1GHz Snapdragon or Hummingbird. And the GPU will be the same BCM2727 that’s somewhat disappointing in the E7.
The X7 will be available in Q2 with a price set at €380 before taxes and subsidies.
Samsung is said to be launching a new Wave 578 with the Bada 1.1 OS this coming May or June for the international market. However, sad news for those of you that’s waiting anxiously for this new handset will be disappointed that there’s actually a Bada 2.0 OS and your new Wave 578 won’t be getting it.
A Russian blog Bada World claims to have obtained some juicy details that’ll cheer up Bada fanatics. The above slide — apparently sourced from a Samsung France conference from a few days ago — lists a pair of new but unnamed handsets that’ll pack the new software, along with 7.2Mbps HSDPA, Bluetooth 3.0, and the seemingly trendsetting NFC. But how about the difference between these two phones? Well, one of them appears to be the flagship Bada 2.0 model, which expects a September launch with a 3.65-inch HVGA display, a 5 megapixel main camera, plus a VGA secondary camera. The second device will follow a month later, sporting a smaller 3.14-inch QVGA screen and just a 3 megapixel imager.
Nokia’s about to hold a Symbian-related event in London in a few days’ time, but it seemed that there are already leaked Symbian news on the net right now, which probably can be directly related to that particular event. A new Symbian UI has appeared in promotional videos alongside the sleek X7 and stylish E6 that’s about to hit the market, just before the new Nokia with Windows Phone 7 arrive in 2012. Unfortunately, all three such videos are listed as private now, but Engadget managed to nab one right before it got canned, demoing an improved Symbian with smooth scrolling that follows one’s finger, a browser purportedly three times faster and a portrait QWERTY keyboard — yes — all courtesy of a Three UK representative.
Yes, Apple’s introduction of the FaceTime is very magical and somewhat epic too. I mean, they managed to woo the crowd into something that’s so 2005, and what’s more it doesn’t work over GSM, and you’ve gotta find a bloody WiFi connection, and what’s more you can only FaceTime one person at a time. But it’s cool, so no biggie there. Right, well here’s another thing that you can have, and that’s Fring. Fring’s been around for quite some time now, and they’ve recently been testing group video call on Android and iOS. Yes, group video call on your iPhone!
The feature will allow up to four users to simultaneously connect, face-to-face in a Brady Bunch-like mosaic as seen above. The beta is currently accepting applicants, so if you think you’re worthy, and you hate FaceTime so much yet still own an iPhone, then head over to the source link to apply. Shame on you Steve Jobs!
Yes, we know that Nokia has partnered with Microsoft to develop smartphones for Windows Phone 7 platform, but these new phones won’t arrive until next year. And what is Nokia to do with their rapidly shrinking market share of mobile phone in the US and worldwide? Well, they continue to nurse their Symbian platforms.
Yes, Symbian isn’t totally out of the window, as Nokia has just launched a new C7 smartphone using the Symbian^3 operating system, with T-Mobile USA (which has since been bought by AT&T Inc. from Deutsche Telekom AG for $39 billion).
Nokia recently cancelled their X7 smartphone for the US market, which ran its Symbian software, after not receiving enough marketing and subsidies support from its intended carrier, AT&T Inc. Nokia launched its higher end N8 late last year without carrier support in the U.S., hindering its chances of finding many users.
Nokia started shipping the C7 world-wide in October at an estimated €335, or $475, before taxes and subsidies. During Nokia’s fourth-quarter analyst call, Mr. Elop mentioned the C7 as one of a number of new Symbian launches that helped contribute to the over five million new devices it shipped in the quarter.
The HP TouchPad and the HP Pre 3 has been getting all the attention, but sadly its little brother the HP Veer is getting neglected. The tiny phone that will succeed the Pixi will be launching in Europe sometime in May, according to O2 Germany. Previously HP only commented on the launch date being “this spring”. Unfortunately, there’s still no news on how much this tiny smartphone powered by WebOS 3.0 will be priced.
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