Mobile Industry Review » world

The Bold 9900: Stylish performance with NFC

Momchil — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:44:08 +0000

Here at BlackBerry World we filmed a demo of the thinnest BlackBerry yet, the Bold 9900. The device is stylish and performance-driven.

Here is the video:

Good morning Nokia World

Ewan — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:02:39 +0000

This week belongs firmly to the mobile giant that is Nokia.

Nokia World has come to London. It’s the corporation’s own chance to speak to the (previously dwindling) faithful entirely on it’s terms.

I’m looking forward to seeing what the company has to offer the marketplace.

Nokia has been learning some hard lessons in the last few years and — ever so slightly — management has got the message, setting their people free from copious restrictions and making things happen. Witness, for example, the company’s announcement of their free navigation services — it took the market entirely by surprise and set the agenda, simultaneously challenging Google to get off it’s arse. I don’t think TomTom and the other ‘Personal Navigation Device’ (“PND”) manufacturers have recovered. Especially given that a PND is now a mobile device.

Nokia didn’t make the announcement 6 months in advance, giving every player at least two board meetings to plan a response. Instead, Anssi got up on stage and said, “This is live on our 10 most popular devices today. Now. From 10am.”

This kind of aggressive presentation and delivery was unfamiliar to a company accustomed to extensive ‘dialog’ with it’s industry partners prior to anything actually happening.

What has now become clear to Nokia is that its partners — the global mobile operators — are irrelevant, having to dance the tune of the consumer, thanks to Apple’s consumerisation of consumer mobile.

Witness Vodafone 360′s (Samsung supplied) handset hitting the marketplace in prime position in all their stores. The consumer said, “Er yes thanks for that, but when do you get the iPhone in?”

What was it? 50 Vodafone 360 pre-orders vs 50,000 iPhone pre-orders? And that’s just Vodafone.

The operators used to pick and choose their successes. Now, they have no choice but to run fast with the consumer and avoid getting it spectacularly wrong for spectacular sums of money.

It used to be Nokia would live or die by the operator decision to stock their products. Witness, for example, Orange demanding to purchase X million Nokia N95s, “But, yeah, could you take the WiFi chip out? Doesn’t work with our strategy today. Thanks.”

And Nokia, trying to push the market forward with integrated WiFi services for all devices, had no choice but to agree to the request.

In the blink of an eye (as far as a Nokia executive is concerned), the market has changed dramatically.

All those ideas Nokia’s geniuses had to put back in the box because their ultra-thick operator customers didn’t ‘get’ or were utterly frightened off? Yeah. Bring them back.

NFC in every Nokia phone? Yes please. The map as the primary mobile interface? Show us! Integrated presence across bit-pipe networks? You bet.

Of course Nokia did lose it’s way. The company had grown accustomed to presenting the consumer with excellent handsets that, on closer inspection and use, were ridden with stupid bugs. And could be upgraded only with a total wipe and a degree in Nuclear Physics. And only when Nokia finally released the firmware for your country and your operator (which would only arrive the month after you’d upgraded your bug ridden Nokia).

But I think we are over the belief mountain now. Nokia’s senior management now recognise the scale of the challenge facing them.

And they are slowly getting there.

Unlike any other manufacturer, they are actually aiming to make products better than the iPhone. Meanwhile most other manufacturers have settled themselves into making devices that are almost as good.

As if the iPhone is a pinnacle of mobile engineering genius.

It is not. I won’t get into that here though.

The iPhone works for today though. And it works for my mum, your mum, my brother, your sister. Everyone. Even a 2 year old.

So what’s next? Well I can’t wait for the industry to evolve beyond the current application silo model (“look, you can now have folders to organise the applications you don’t use”).

The real sweet spot for me with Nokia is MeeGo — indeed, this should be the focus for anyone who’s evolved beyond a Nokia S40 cheap-phone.

Anssi was very clear to us in his video interview at Mobile World Congress in February: Symbian is for the low-end market (oh, yes, there’s nothing wrong with the N8) whilst MeeGo will deliver their top-end devices.

“Wait until January 2011,” Anssi told us, “Then judge us.”

With all predictions pointing to a sizeable percentage of devices from Nokia next year running MeeGo, it will be an interesting 2011. If MeeGo and Nokia hardware combined actually delivers the next generation mobile devices we’ve all been looking for, I look forward to sparks flying across the marketplace.

One can but hope. I think Nokia can do it.

Although, as I write, I’ve just got news that Anssi — the Nokia equivalent of a steamroller to whom the market was looking to for a fix of the mobile devices division — has resigned.

Well, it’s certainly going to be an interesting 2011 for Nokia.

Posted via email from MIR Live

Top 5 Blackberry World downloads

Ewan — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:28:21 +0000

Interesting stuff:

Pandora – Music streaming application, great for discovering new music
Flashlight – Another flashlight app, but this one seems to have a following!
ScoreMobile – Makes following sports scores in real-time fast and easy
Facebook – A new version was just released and it adds even more features
Viigo – Highly acclaimed content aggregator

From the official Inside BlackBerry blog .

Vodafone’s Mobile World Congress blog

Ewan — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:39:23 +0000

I had some latin pop-up on my series of alerts regarding Vodafone. Do you remember that they ran a blog dedicated to the Mobile World Congress last year? Here’s the story we ran about it last year.

They did a tip top job for such a stuffy traditional FTSE-sized company. Kudos to the team behind the service.

It looks like they’re back again this year. With a bit of a different design it seems — very nice indeed, if it is a little bit high brow. Everything’s in Latin!

Of course… it’s still being designed. But standby — I’m sure there will be some hot stuff going up on the blog soon. If you’d like to follow it (and this looks to be the correct location) you can find the Vodafone Mobile World Congress blog here: http://www.vodafone-cacommunity.com/mobile_world_conference/.

I imagine you’ll see some content on the site from early February. Looking forward to it.

I hope some other networks will be doing something similar too.

Got my Mobile World Congress press credentials

Ewan — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:57:33 +0000

I’m in.

That’s it. Locked and loaded… Are you going? If you are, I hope you’ve booked your hotel already? And your flight?

Nokia World: The gossip, the joy, the heartache

Ewan — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:48:47 +0000

Alas I am not at Nokia World. Commitments here in the UK prevented it. A total arse.

Thank you to the chaps at Nokia — Ray in particular — for their understanding and flexibility. Instead, we’ve sent our roving reporter, RobK, to Barcelona, courtesy of Nokia.

Rob’s planning some mini-summaries, overviews and, of course, a full dollop of news from the show.

I’m looking forward to some news from Nokia. They’ve been a bit quiet of late and I’m really hoping that the ‘we’re an internet company’ mentality is seeping through the company’s heart and that some of the next devices, services and policies will shock, delight and awe us.

Bring it on Nokia!

WorldÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s fastest mobile phone is announced

RobK — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:38:13 +0000

ASUS have just released a mobile phone with an 800Mhz processor inside, beating hands down the current spate of the 500+ MHz powered variety around today.

Just as your face lights up with delight, we’re sorry to bring you the sad news that no prices have been set as yet for the ASUS P565, ETA or even an interested network.

Although, only recently we brought you news of O2 running with an ASUSTeK in their Xda range, which could be another good fit here. Seeing as ASUS aren’t known to stand on their own two feet yet as a distinguished brand like HTC are, perhaps the OEM route is still best for them, for now.

Still running from Windows mobile 6.1, it’s a 2.8-inch 480 x 640 touch screen PDA based on their GLIDE UI that has apparently established a score twice as high as others on the Vsbenchmark. Which is a test suite that’s used to gauge the hardware performance of a phone, in graphics and otherwise.

Pitching up as a 3G phone, with Tri-band GSM and WIFI, it’s geared towards the business world as expected with this series of phones by ASUS. This is confirmed by their bundling with the likes of push mail, business card recognition and Microsoft Office Mobile.

The Marvell TavorP 800 MHz powered phone has been given the standby time of 250-300hrs on 3G, 200-250hrs with 2G by Asus. And the talk time of 3hrs on 3G, and 4hrs with 2G. This is comparable with other handsets around and an expected time too.

Is a phone with a processor this powerful really needed, or is it just that time for something new to push the boundaries?

Please discuss below in the comments, as it would be of interest to hear your thoughts on the matter.

The worldÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s first WiMAX mobile phone appears

RobK — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 01:09:35 +0000

HTC has launched the MAX 4G, the only WiMAX 4G handset on the market today.

Slight snag though, it’s just for Russia right now on their Scartel network.

When will we see the handset elsewhere? Well, when other places have rolled out a WiMAX network we guess and is capable of supporting such a beast.

Think of the chicken and the egg scenario, and then go around and around in circles until you find the answer. Hopefully, with this handset out now it’s only a matter of time before the egg gets laid or the chicken gives birth to itself.

The HTC MAX 4G comes off looking like a big brother to the HTC Touch Diamond. Being the first GSM/WiMAX it’s got a lot to live up to, so hopefully we’ll hear good things over the next coming months.

As expected the Russian network is talking up the high-speed wireless Internet possibilities of the phone and why not.

Their Ã¢â‚¬ËœHome package’ provides users with access to online games, maps, messaging and file exchange applications whist on the move. They’ve much hailed their traffic prioritisation algorithms allowing online films, video and TV programmes to be viewed on the large WVGA screen.

Unbeknown to us they broadcast 14 free channels, with another 23 channels by the end of 2008 for their mobiles. Ideal for the 3.8-inch, 800 x 480 screen on the HTC MAX 4G which by all accounts can display up to nine TV channels simultaneously.

It’s running Windows Mobile 6.1, with their Touch FLO 3D user interface over the top, all with a 5MP camera and 8GB of onboard storage.

Some will undoubtedly say Ã¢â‚¬ËœWhy not run Android on it instead’; well perhaps over time it could be possible. Keep an eye on the xda-developers site for further developments.