Get to it N97 owners. In addition to your free Ovi Maps, Nokia just let loose firmware version 21.0.045 that promises to improve call reliability and internet browsing while smoothing out the jumpiness some have seen with kinetic scrolling introduced in v20. It's available now via a Nokia Software Update tether if you just can't wait for it to be set free over the air. As always, let us know how it goes in the comments.
If we can think of one reason to take being told "to mind your own business" with a smile it would be the Nokia Eseries. A household name for enterprise users, it's hardly a surprise that each E-series update is greeted with plenty of excitement. The Nokia E75 is no exception, even if it doesn't really put anything new on the table.
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Nokia E75 official photos
The side-sliding QWERTY form factor lands on Symbian turf following a reasonably successful spell on the WinMo side of the yard.
The major novelty of the Nokia E75 is the form factor and we're about to see if this is enough for it to carve a niche out for itself in a crowded market.
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Nokia E75 lifestyle photos
There's no denying that if a side-sliding QWERTY is good enough for a teenage-targeted music phone (the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic), it must be more than at home in a full-featured business phone. Welcome to the Nokia E75.
Key features
* 2.4" 16M-color TFT display of QVGA resolution
* Four-row side-slide QWERTY keyboard
* Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G (with HSDPA) support
* Symbian OS with S60 3.2 UI
* 369 MHz ARM11 CPU
* 3.5mm standard audio jack
* microSD card slot, 4GB microSD card prebundled
* 3.2 megapixel auto focus camera with a dedicated shutter key, geotagging and VGA@30fps video recording
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with UPnP technology
* Built-in GPS receiver and Nokia Maps with 3 months of free voice-assisted navigation
* USB and stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) connectivity
* Steel battery cover
* FM radio with RDS
* Remote Wipe functionality
* Carrier-independent VoIP support
* Office document editor
* User-friendly Mode Switch for toggling two homescreen setups
* Smart dialing
Main disadvantages:
* Rather expensive at this point (more than 350 euro)
* Controls around the D-pad are too tiny
* Mediocre camera performance
* Fingerprint-prone cheap-looking front
* Wiggling cheapo camera key
* Limited battery life (in comparison to the E71)
Even if we leave aside the scores of competing business handsets, the Nokia E75 still faces quite stiff competition from within the E-series range itself. It's unreasonably close to the E90 as far as pricing is concerned and is quite uncomfortably cloning most of Nokia E71 functionality. The side-sliding QWERTY keyboard and FP2 are pretty much all the E75 has over the E71.
They don't get any bigger than that. A launch of this caliber can aptly be called inauguration day. The release of Nokia N97 is the Nseries counter-move that geeks have been waiting for since November. Easily one of the most complete smartphones ever created, the N97 has been haunting Symbian buffs' dreams for quite a while.
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Nokia N97
We're about to see if this feature-loaded son of a gun is the stuff dreams are made of and if it has the gut to stand up to the best on the market. The 5800 XpressMusic was cheap enough to easily be forgiven a couple of shortcomings but the N97 is not the begging type. Nokia-faithfuls are used to only getting the best treatment, so they won't settle for less with the Nseries skipper.
Key features
* Slide-n-tilt 3.5" 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
* 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash and lens cover (VGA@30fps video recording)
* Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI
* Slide-out three-row full QWERTY keyboard
* ARM 11 434MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM
* Quad-band GSM support and 3G with HSDPA support
* Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS (plus 3 months of free voice-guided navigation via Ovi Maps)
* Digital compass
* Class-leading 32GB onboard storage
* microSD card slot with microSDHC support
* Built-in accelerometer
* 3.5 mm audio jack
* TV out
* Stereo FM Radio with RDS, FM transmitter
* microUSB port and stereo Bluetooth v2.0
* Web browser has full Flash and Java support
* Nice audio reproduction quality
Main disadvantages
* The S60 5th edition UI still has poor ergonomics and is not as thumbable as expected
* Camera features are so two-thousand-and-late
* No DivX or XviD support out-of-the-box
* No smart dialing
* Somewhat limited 3rd party software availability
* No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
Obvious from the list above, the Nokia N97 hardly puts anything new on the table. It is however a bold try to fit all of today's top features under one hood and offer a nice ride at that. This certainly is an ambitious task by itself but the ever-expectant Nseries fans, who always want something new on their next handset, make it even harder. The Nokia N97 will need to be near flawless to get a warm welcome.
The XpressMusic family has walked a long way – and shed a great deal of weight – since the 5700. The music-centric Finns have always felt at home on Symbian ground though, and the Nokia 5630 is the next step for them and they’re getting smarter and faster. A sharp mind in a fit body, the latest XpressMusic smartphone packs the quickest processor Nokia have offered to date.
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Nokia 5630 XpressMusic official photos
XpressMusic is not the Nokia 5630’s only virtue. The subdued exterior reveals little of the talent that lays beneath. Along with the music perks go Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel snapper, N-Gage support, and S60 FP2 to open the door to a whole world of extra apps.
Of course, it’s not without its flaws but think again before casting the first stone. The 5630 XpressMusic is slim enough – both in girth and price – to dodge its critics.
Key features:
* ARM 11 600 MHz processor
* Quad-band GSM support
* 3G with HSDPA
* 12 mm slim
* 2.2" 16M-color QVGA display of excellent sunlight legibility
* 3 megapixel camera, enhanced fixed focus and dual LED flash
* VGA video-call camera
* Symbian OS with S60 3.2 UI
* Stereo FM radio with RDS
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with UPnP technology
* Bluetooth (with A2DP) and microUSB port
* microSD card slot (16 GB supported, 4GB included)
* Standard 3.5mm audio jack
* Dedicated music keys
* N-Gage support
* Ovi Contacts integration
* Contacts bar on the homescreen
* N-Series-like gallery
* Carrying pouch supplied
* Text-to-speech Message reader system application
Main disadvantages:
* Cheap plastic build
* microSD card very hard to eject
* Screen is on the small side for comfortable web browsing or video watching and has inaccurate color reproduction
* Camera has no autofocus and tends to oversharpen images
* Video recording quality is poor and the framerate – low
We quite like the nice little twist the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic brings in terms of looks and substance. Behind its youthful and playful disguise, there is indeed a power smartphone (along the lines of Nokia E52) to meet all your media and connectivity needs.
Nokia N900, the Maemo 5-based high-end device from the Finnish mobile phone maker, has finally been released on the US market. The company announced today that the gadget already started to ship to those who place orders for it in advance, and that the Linux-based Maemo platform present on it would offer users a wide range of connectivity options.
“Consumers from every segment of the population are looking for more out of their mobile device - more power, more ability, more connectivity. The Nokia N900 ushers in a new era with a very powerful mobile computer,” said Alessandro Lamanna, Vice President, Retail Sales, Nokia. “With an open source operating system, incorporated technology like an OMAP processor, and real time web widgets, the Nokia N900 delivers the experience of a pocketable computer that has the information you're looking for right there waiting for you thanks to the ability to be connected just about anywhere.”
The new handset comes to the shelves with 32GB of storage, access to 3G data networks, connectivity to mail, favorite websites, social communities, images, music, multitasking capabilities, and more. The Nokia N900 proves to be a powerful computer in the palm of the user's hand, delivering a great experience regardless of the applications running or the multimedia features one would like to enjoy.
The Nokia N900 has an open source platform, offering simple ways to build applications for the device, including podcasting, Twitter and instant messaging solutions. In addition, it sports a web browser based on Mozilla technology, which comes with support for Adobe Flash 9.4 and for gestures, for a more enhanced experience.
Other features of the handset include a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a side-sliding full QWERTY keyboard, the possibility to personalize a number of four screens, as to take great pictures using its 5-megapixel photo snapper with dual LED flash. Available in a black finish, the new Nokia N900 can be purchased from the company's Flagship stores in New York and Chicago priced at USD 649, can be found listed for purchase on Nokia's website, as well as via various retailers in the country.
Design
When looking at the N97 front-on you could be mistaken into thinking this latest Nokia is nothing more than an iPhone clone, though this would be selling Nokia's excellent design well short. It might be a touch thicker and heavier than Apple's phone, but it also addresses a few of the physical elements of the iPhone that we wish had been changed in the iPhone 3GS update. Between the 4mm in extra depth and the matte plastic finish, the N97 is much easy to hold, and then there's the sliding screen and the superb keyboard below it.
If you've seen pictures of the N97 you've probably seen it on its back with the slide open and the screen tilting up. When open, the screen sits at an angle just shy of 45 degrees, making it easy to read while using the well-spaced keyboard, or navigating the menus with the large five-way nav key. We love this design, every part of it feels slick and deliberate; from the smooth sliding mechanism to the position of the keys, Nokia clearly has user experience at the front of its design philosophy. The only oversight we can find is the absence of a "back" key on the keyboard for stepping backwards through the menu system. It's easy enough to reach up to the touchscreen, but this gets annoying after the fourth or fifth back-step in a complex menu tree.
Which brings us to the downside in this aforementioned Nokia design philosophy. While the physical design of the N97 is excellent, the Series 60 platform is starting to show its age next to the shiny new touchscreen platforms from Google and Apple. The N97 runs on Series 60 v5, and while this is the latest version of the platform, trying to navigate through the system is becoming tedious — even for us, who know the system so well. Completing simple tasks like turning off input sound effects or changing the ringtone takes six steps and has us wishing Nokia had a simpler menu with even simpler menu titles like "Sounds", rather than the legacy titling from a decade of its preceding platforms.
The 3.5-inch touchscreen is one of the phone's outstanding elements. Nokia uses resistive touchscreen technology, which compared with capacitive touchscreens, is considered the lesser technology, especially in regards to responsiveness. Nokia takes this assumption and turns it on its head, delivering outstanding responsiveness and a bright, colourful screen to boot. The screen is easy to read and our test videos look fantastic.
Features
Even though it was first announced six months ago, the N97 will still be one of the most impressively specced phones on the market when its released in Australia during July. Alongside the touchscreen and full-QWERTY keyboard, the N97 comes with a decent mix of business and consumer features including HSDPA and Wi-Fi for web browsing, A-GPS, a built-in digital compass and Nokia Maps for navigation, a 3.5mm headphone socket, and 32GB of internal memory plus a microSD card slot to increase this to a possible 48GB.
In line with previous N-series releases, the N97 houses an excellent 5-megapixel camera on the back of the handset, complete with Carl Zeiss optics, auto-focus and dual-LED photolights. In 2009 we're seeing the megapixel count in camera phones growing with Sony Ericsson about to break new ground with 12.1 megapixels in the upcoming Satio, but for our money Nokia is still producing one of the best camera phone modules available. This camera is lightning fast to fire up and the super-quick shutter helps to eliminate handheld judder and keep the focus nice and sharp. The colour reproduction tends to be a little cold — whites tend towards shades of blue — but overall the pictures we've taken have been superb.
Multimedia components and the web browser don't seem to have improved much since the 5800 XpressMusic, which is a bit of a disappointment. The music and video player are both fine — compatible with a decent range of media file formats — but the browser still needs some attention from the Nokia software boffins. The browser loads page content slowly, and the view is never optimised for the screen — instead we spent the first five or 10 seconds on each new page zooming and panning to get an overview of a site. The N97 ships with Flash Lite 3 installed and by default Flash content is turned on, but we suggest you switch this off to speed up page load times significantly. As with many elements on the N97, the browser is better than previous Nokia releases, but is still lagging behind the current competition.
Apps and the Ovi Store
We first saw Nokia using Series 60 v5 on the 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen, the company has since evolved the home screen interface and opened up this space on the N97 to five panels of widgets. These spaces can be used for both online and offline widget apps including pre-installed variants for Facebook, AP and News.com.au live tickers, favourite contacts, email notifications and favourite installed applications, with more widgets available to download through the Nokia Ovi Store.
The widgets stand out as the most useful new feature to the N97. While the handset is capable of nearly everything available on previous Nokia handsets, the widgets panels are virgin territory, and a very welcome addition. The pre-installed apps from Facebook and News.com.au are both extremely lightweight; they update seamlessly and quickly execute the app to a full-screen view with a minimum of lag.
We were surprised to see Nokia's excellent email client, Nokia Messaging, missing from the N97. Nokia Messaging is a much cleaner client than the standard messaging app, and is also much easier to use with fingers on the touchscreen. Luckily the Ovi Store was ready to plug the gap, and we recommend that this quick download be one of the first things you do with a new N97.
Performance
Zippy performance, as it relates to the user experience, is steadily becoming the make-or-break of many new smartphones in the market. This time last year most of us were content with slightly sluggish performance, however, this is not the case today. Again we come back to the iPhone and Android smartphone platforms. Both have been developed with touchscreen use in mind and both run at full speed; it's unusual to wait more than a moment for an app or a menu branch to execute. Nokia has been playing catch-up in this department over the last few major releases, and while the N97 is its best, so far it is still a little off the pace. The processing is punchy and the touchscreen is impressively responsive. We have noticed a few bugs here and there — a few blank screens while the N97 clears the memory and makes way for a new app — and the phone does take a moment to make data connections, which slows down the execution of the browser and the Ovi Store app, but overall we've been pleased.
One area Nokia rarely falters is call quality, and the N97 is no exception. After testing the iPhone 3GS just a week before, it's been a pleasure to switch to a phone that makes and receives calls so clearly. It can be hard to decipher good call quality from poorer or mediocre performers, but the N97 is quite noticeably better than we've heard for a while. Battery life is also decent; its nearly two-day cycle is good without being outstanding, and includes constant use of Wi-Fi, web browsing, push email and standard calling and messaging.
Overall
There's a lot to like about the N97 and we think this handset is a more fitting flagship model for the world's biggest mobile phone company than last year's N96. But is it enough to compete in an increasingly competitive mobile landscape? It has the looks, it has decent battery life and comes with most of the essential basics pre-installed. It'll handle your calls, messages, emails and simple web searches, and the new home screen widgets system can be customised to put your top five apps or online feeds right in front of your eyes.
Yet there's something about the N97 that remains lacking; it's not a question of what it does but how it does it. While the performance of the phone is mostly good, this current incarnation of Symbian Series 60 definitely lacks the polish of better operating platforms. The menu tree for apps and settings is unnecessarily complex and for people upgrading to their first smartphone, or first Nokia, the lack of common-sense naming conventions will confuse those that aren't scared away in the first place.
Google released a new version of the free Google Mobile App for Symbian Series 60 (S60) phones on Monday. The update gives phone owners the ability to press the Talk button and speak search terms into the phone. While a new feature to the S60 operating system, users on other platforms, like BlackBerry and iPhone, have been able to turn speech into search results for some time.
The new Google Mobile App shows up as a shortcut widget on the Nokia home screen, which makes sounding out searches on those Nokia N and E series handsets faster than on other mobile platforms, where you must open the Google Mobile App to begin a search.
Whether you talk or type, Google Mobile App uses GPS or cell tower triangulation to fill in your location and find the closest whatever-it-is nearby. This is consistent with Google Mobile App for other platforms, though Windows Mobile is the only other one that also uses the home screen plug-in.
In addition to adding digital ears to search, Google has made them more global. Mandarin Chinese has joined Google's speech recognition database, so Nokia seekers can speak queries in English or in Mandarin. Google warns that the Mobile App is better at distinguishing certain accents better than others; a Beijing lilt may search more successfully than southern-flavored speech, for instance.
Mandarin recognition is currently only available for Nokia phones, but Google says in an official blog post that they're working to expand the capability to other mobile platforms, like Google Android and iPhone. Also, not every S60 owner can take advantage of the new Google Mobile App, only those running version 3. The app is not yet supported on touch screen phones, which run version 5 of the system software.
You can download Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 by pointing the mobile browser to http://m.google.com.
The Nokia Internet Tablet series which debuted in 2005 has always been sidelined as a companion and an accessory for accessing the Internet on a large touchscreen handheld. It had a niche target audience and the devices never really hit big time. Things have evolved dramatically in the recent year with smartphones rapidly outfitted with large touch-sensitive displays, putting them in a head-on collision with the Tablets. The upcoming N900 addresses that issue with built-in cellular capabilities as well as pure processing power and a desktop-like experience in a pocket-friendly size, putting it back into the running.
Unlike the earlier Internet Tablets, the N900 packs 3G and HSPA (10Mbps downlink, 2Mbps uplink) wireless radios, so obviously you can make and receive cellular calls with it. Under the hood is an ARM Cortex-A8 600MHz processor, up to 1GB of application memory and an OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics accelerator. The combined benefit delivers an ideal multitasking environment where several applications can run in the background at the same time without slowing down the device's performance. You can see that in a quick demo of the N900 below.
But what's really different this time is the updated Linux-based Maemo 5 software that is supposed to bring a PC-like experience on a mobile device. You can access multiple "desktops" panels by swiping your finger across the 3.5-inch 800 x 480-pixel screen, while the accompanying dashboard lets you switch effortlessly between tasks and applications in the background. The Maemo browser, built with Mozilla technology, has full Adobe Flash 9.4 support and you can use the onscreen mouse pointer to copy-and-paste text, or apply a swirling motion gesture to zoom in and out of a Web page. The latter doesn't seem to work as well compared with double tapping to achieve the same effect, as it seems to "jiggle" the page rather than to accurately zoom in.
Messaging on the N900 is also a deeply integrated function. SMSes are displayed in a threaded format so you can always follow up on past messages. The Messaging window also lets you view your IM chat history and check whether your contacts are available for chats. You can also view their status via the phonebook, and from there select a preferred mode such as Gtalk or Skype to contact someone. The buttons on the slide-out QWERTY appear fairly raised, so hopefully this will provide a good tactile experience even though the layout seems rather crammed.
The N900 captures WVGA 16:9 videos and 5-megapixel images and you can tag (using the new tag cloud) and share content with your friends via Ovi Share, Facebook, Flickr, etc. According to the specifications, the Maemo 5 software currently doesn't support MMS or the underlying WAP technology. For business users, Microsoft Exchange is also supported, so this means you get push-email and synchronization capabilities with Outlook calendars and contacts from the server to the N900. Maemo software as well as application updates can be done over-the-air, so you will not need to be connected to the PC to get software upgrades.
At a glance, it's clear the Maemo user interface is radically different from S60 which we have all become familiar with over the past few years. So how does the enhanced system fit into Nokia's portfolio of devices? We suspect S60 will continue to form the backbone of the mobile operating system for Nokia smartphones for at least the next year. But moving forward, Maemo, which provides the flexibility of an open system, will gradually be pushed into the limelight. That's not to say that S60 will wither away as it will still continue to be developed by members of the Symbian Foundation. What we may see is S60 being used in midrange handsets, with Maemo used to power higher-end devices.
As to how the N900 and the recently launched Booklet 3G Netbook fit into Nokia's portfolio of devices, a Nokia spokesperson said that the latter is an opportunity to bring a fresh perspective into the PC world. More on this topic here.
The N900 is available for preorder in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. According to Nokia, the device will hit the markets from October at 500 euros before tax and subsidies.
Two of the world's largest cellphone makers, Nokia and Samsung have launched their latest attempts to rival the iPhone and BlackBerry smartphones. Nokia has announced that it has started deliveries of its top-of-the-range N900, while Samsung said it would launch its own open mobile platform, bada, in December as it tries to make up for a late start in the smartphone market.
Nokia and Samsung together sell about 60 percent of all cellphones globally, but have lost some ground to Apple, which makes the iPhone, and Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry. The N900 model is Nokia's first phone to run on the Linux Maemo operating system, which analysts see as key for Nokia to regain ground in the coming years, reports Reuters. "The Maemo platform, which powers the N900, reflects Nokia's need to replace its legacy software platforms with something more powerful to compete with Apple and others," said Ben Wood, Head of Research at British consultancy CCS Insight.
While Nokia has lost ground in the smartphone business, it is still the world's largest smartphone maker by volume, but Samsung's volumes are well behind Apple, RIM and HTC. "Samsung's announcement of bada shows it has also identified the same requirement. The big question is, does the mobile phone market need yet another operating system," Wood said.
Global sales of mobile handsets will snap a four-quarter losing streak in the past three months of the year as the industry is buoyed by economic recovery, a Reuters poll of analysts showed. "The global handset industry will be heading out of recession in the fourth quarter," said Neil Mawston, Analyst with research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics.
Sales are expected to rise three percent in the fourth quarter as the Christmas period brings a brighter end to a year in which sales are forecast to fall 6.9 percent, the poll of 31 banks, brokerages and research firms showed. While the broader handset industry has struggled, sales of smartphones have boomed, and analysts predict the smartphone market will grow 20 to 30 percent this year.
However, there are signs showing that increased competition is starting to put pressure on margins and put some firms on the back foot. This week the world's Number four smartphone brand HTC said it expected fourth-quarter revenue to fall almost 15 percent from the same period a year earlier, as the intense rivalry forces prices lower.
Growth in the smartphone market slowed to just four percent in the third quarter, from 13 percent annual growth seen in the previous quarter, according to research firm Canalys. "Consumers in Europe and Asia seem to continue to gravitate towards low-end smartphones and feature phones equipped with touch screens," said Analyst Tero Kuittinen from research firm MKM Partners. "This is putting extra pressure on high-end smartphone pricing," Kuittinen added.
High-end products are important for Nokia because the company has not only lost market share, but its average selling prices have declined faster than the industry average. Goldman Sachs has said it expects Nokia's value share - a measure reflecting average prices and underlying market share - for phones costing more than $350 to decline to 13 percent this year from 33 percent just two years earlier.