Windows Phone takes prestigious What Mobile award
LONDON, United Kingdom – We’re delighted with the reactions to the Nokia Lumia 800, but this one caps them all.
Today, the stunning new smartphone was awarded the Mobile of the Year at the What Mobile Awards 2011 at London’s Whisky Mist.
Among companies that have played truly significant roles in building and shaping the wireless industry as we know it today, few if any can stand shoulder to shoulder with Motorola. It has been more than 38 years since Dr. Martin Cooper, a Motorola executive, made the first analog cell phone call from a prototype handset, and Motorola has continued to innovate ever since. The company’s rich history of innovation has yielded an extensive IP portfolio — a big part of the draw for Google, which is currently trying to spend $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility — and it has built a number of iconic devices. None, however, are quite as recognizable as the Motorola RAZR.
(read more @ BGR)
Oslo, Norway — October 27, 2011Did you know that Android users are actually more likely to be active on music web sites than iPhone owners? Or, that feature phone users are the most active social web users? These stats and more are available in this month’s State of the Mobile Web report where we take a look at the differences between web usage for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone and feature phones users. Anonymous, aggregated data from the Opera Audience Network show the differences in surfing habits between the different mobile platforms.
OmniTouch is a wearable depth-sensing and projection system that enables interactive multitouch applications on everyday surfaces. Beyond the shoulder-worn system, there is no instrumentation of the user or environment. Foremost, the system allows the wearer to use their hands, arms and legs as graphical, interactive surfaces. Users can also transiently appropriate surfaces from the environment to expand the interactive area (e.g., books, walls, tables). On such surfaces - without any calibration - OmniTouch provides capabilities similar to that of a mouse or touchscreen: X and Y location in 2D interfaces and whether fingers are “clicked” or hovering, enabling a wide variety of interactions. Thus, it is now conceivable that anything one can do on today’s mobile devices, they could do in the palm of their hand.
A British man has become the world’s first ever patient to have a smartphone docking system built into his prosthetic arm.
(vía Telegraph UK)
Nokia’s new Windows Phone handsets are priced to sell, and some analysts are impressed with what they’ve seen so far. A team from Barclays Capital on Thursday said Nokia’s first round of Windows Phones aren’t quite as differentiated as they would have liked, but they are priced competitively. “We believe [Nokia’s] devices will be competitive in the marketplace from both hardware and pricing standpoints,” the Barclays team wrote in a note to investors. “Nokia in fact highlighted that pricing tariffs for the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 will be one notch cheaper than the iPhone 4S across all launch markets.”
The analysts were also impressed by the number of carriers supporting the devices across launch markets, Barron’s reports. “We have been positively surprised by the large number of operators involved (an average of 5 per country where the device will be launched in Western Europe this quarter),” they wrote.
Nokia unveiled its Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 smartphones earlier this week, and preliminary reactions were positive. The high-end Nokia Lumia 800 offers a sleek unibody case and a sharp AMOLED display atop a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 16GB of storage and an 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. The mid-level Nokia Lumia 710 features the same display and chipset along with a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of storage and swappable brightly-colored battery covers.
Barclays analysts conclude in their note that future Windows Phones from Nokia should offer more differentiation, and future software updates could be key. Nokia’s Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 launch next month across several markets, though they will not hit U.S. shores until some time next year.
(vía BGR)
This is the Nokia Lumia 800, and according to Stephen Elop, it’s the “first real Windows Phone.”
There’s a single-core 1.4GHz processor inside the Lumia 800 and 16GB of internal storage, you’ll find its curved 3.7-inch ClearBlack AMOLED screen framed by a black, cyan or magenta case with individually drilled speaker holes, and unlike the N9, there’s a dedicated camera button for that f/2.2 Carl Zeiss Tessar lens to make use of. On the software front, we’re of course looking at Windows Phone Mango, and the Lumia 800 comes with a free 25GB of SkyDrive storage to get you started in the cloud, plus Nokia Drive, a free turn-by-turn voice navigation program, a first for any Windows Phone. There’s also Nokia Music with Mix Radio, a global service with no subscriptions or log-ins required for “hundreds of channels of locally-relevant music,” and an ESPN Sports Hub — those are three programs you won’t find on any other WP7 device.
Nokia says it’ll retail for around €420 unsubsidized, or around $580, and though we’re hearing absolutely nothing about a US release, you can pre-order it now and expect shipment in November if you live in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, or the Netherlands.
(vía This is my next…)
For €270 (about $375) unsubsidized, the 710 has a 3.7-inch 800 x 480 LCD, 1.4GHz processor, 512MB internal memory and GPU as its pricier cousin. It also features 8GB of storage, a 5-megapixel camera, a 1300mAh battery good for 6.9 hours of talk time, quad-band 14.4Mbps HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, and A-GPS.
It’ll be available first in Asia, with Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the end of the year. There’s no word on a confirmed US release.
(vía This is my next…)
We had the opportunity of checking out one of Nokia’s testing facilities where engineers and designers get to test out phones by placing them in a variety of real world scenarios to ensure they meet quality standards. In all honesty, it makes us really appreciate the kind of commitment that Nokia has when it comes to their devices…
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Nokia-testing-lab-tour_id22914
