Defiant Blackberry boss dismisses Nokia jibe

Research In Motion's boss has dismissed suggestions that its Blackberry devices are no longer a major player in the smartphone race.

Jim Balsillie told BBC News that the firm should not be written off.

It follows comments by Nokia's Stephen Elop, who said that the smartphone ecosystem was now a three horse race between Windows, Android and Apple.

"I don't know how you can say that we are not in the race," said Mr Balsillie at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

He said that Blackberry had experienced 70% growth last year and was the number one phone in the UK.

Figures from research firm Gfk show that the phone maker had 28.2% of the UK smartphone market in 2010.

However, the firm trails Google, Nokia and Apple in terms of market share, according to figures from Canalys.

"Are people writing us off? We have had huge growth in the last year. I wouldn't write us off," he said.

He was also keen to shake off RIM's business focussed image.

"80% of our subscribers are consumers."

Blackberry is forging a new link with younger, teenage consumers who are flocking to the handset because of Blackberry messaging.

Analysts have characterised 2011 as a year of transition for Blackberry as it moves away from its traditional business roots.

But for Mr Balsillie the greatest change is the move into larger devices.

"The biggest transition for us is that we are coming out with tablets," he said.

The firm announced its Playbook tablet device in September 2010.

In Barcelona, the firm also said that would be launching a 4G Playbook in the second half of the year. None of its tablets have yet hit shop shelves, but are expected in the coming weeks.

It has been a difficult year for RIM in countries such as Saudi Arabia and India, where governments want to gain greater access to the tight security system used for Blackberry's business users.

Mr Balsillie said the company's policy had not changed, despite significant growth amongst Indian consumers.

"We want to abide by local laws while also supporting our systems," he said.

RIM has always maintained that it cannot interfere with the encryption system set up to protect its business customers' messages.

It remained in talks with the government in India, said a spokesman.

Read more »

zilla to award 10 add-on developers with a Nokia N900

browser for Maemo at the contest homepage.

The Maemo 5 based Nokia N900 started shipping a few days ago but we guess it will be a few days before all stores get theirs. So this challenge is your chance not only to get it for free but also to be among the first N900 owners.

To participate you have to develop an add-on for the mobile Firefox web browser and submit it before December 7, 2009.The judges will choose which TEN addons offer best user experience and innovation.

If you already have developed an add-on for the mobile Firefox, you only have to confirm that you want to take part in the challenge. Well, that is.

For further details on the rules follow that link.

The organizers are ready to supply the participants with all the needed SDK tools as well as with useful tips and personal advices. The deadline is just around the corner so hurry up. The clock is ticking.

Read more »

Nokia Erdos is Thee Luxury Mobile About to Reinvent the Maker's Shortcoming of Strong Specs in High Mobility

Nokia 8800 series of luxury phones have always focused on high quality materials and superior build quality, while holding back on the spec sheet. With the Nokia 8800 Erdos this reputation is about to change.

First off, "Erdos" is just a code name so expect that to change at some point. And second - this won't be an Arte. The Arte phones have had largely the same design, differing in materials only. The 8800 Erdos changes not only the design but also the way the phones are built.

The Nokia Ardos body will be constructed out of a single piece of "bullet silver". This apparently is marketing talk for stainless steel, so you probably can't kill a werewolf with it, but carving out the body out of a single piece of metal is all the rage with high-end laptops and the ridiculously expensive luxury phones.

The screen of the Erdos however is covered with regular scratch-proof glass, rather than sapphire, which is the usual weapon of choice in such cases. The glass covering the screen though turns silver when the display is off, giving the impression that the phone is a single slab of stainless steel. The screen itself is an OLED unit with QVGA resolution and a diagonal of 2.4 inches.

Nokia 8800 Erdos

The high-end design of the Nokia 8800 Erdos includes a rather unique feature too - it's a slider like the rest of its siblings, but the keypad raises to the level of the display when you slide it out. This should make the keys of the top row much more accessible.

Sounds good already, but we haven't even gotten to the good part yet - the Nokia 8800 Erdos is the first of its breed to be a full-on smartphone. It'll run the Symbian OS S60 and feature Wi-Fi and A-GPS. The internal memory is 8GB, though there's no card slot.

The camera is the best in the luxury class with its 5 megapixels and Carl Zeiss lens with autofocus. There's a dual-LED flash too.

Rounding off the specs is the reasonably compact size of the phone. The 8800 Erdos measures 116.9 x 50,3 x 15.0 mm, though its weight is kept on the hush-hush. There is also a dedicated noise reduction microphone on the back.

The Nokia 8800 Erdos will be available in October with tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900) and dual-band 3G/HSPA. The price is the other thing missing from the rumored specs, though this could easily top the price point of the Gold Arte.

Read more »

EISA 2010 Awards Announce Mobile Winners in All Categories

EISA - the European Imaging and Sound Association - announced its 2009-2010 awards for mobile devices and greenness. More than 50 prominent tech magazines from all over Europe got together to judge this and here are the results.

The European Camera Phone award was snatched by the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD. If you thought the Samsung Pixon12 was a sure-win - EISA was looking at overall performance, and 8 megapixels of still resolution and 720p/24fps video were enough to nail it. The 3.7" 360x640 pixels AMOLED screen was also noted among the phone's strongest point.

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD

The European Music Phone is… the Sony Ericsson W995. EISA looks at not only combining the most desired and technologically advanced features but value for money as well, things most likely to be appreciated by enthusiastic public. It seems this is what tipped the scales towards the W995.

Sony Ericsson W995

The European Business Phone award went to the Nokia E75. We guess the E71 would have felt right at home the the top of the ladder in this category as well, but we guess technically it's not a 2009 model and the Nokia E75 was noted as extremely well designed and capable of fulfilling all communication needs. Robust build quality and long battery life were also major factors in the decision.

Nokia E75

The European Smartphone award may be a surprise to some - in this category the iPhone, and more specifically the iPhone 3GS, is King Kong standing on the Empire State Building, with countless of other phones buzzing around it while trying to shoot it down. Try as they might, the "iPhone-killers" still have a way to go, as the iPhone still clutches the beautiful maiden of user-friendly, simple but sleek UI. According to the EISA, the 3GS is a huge leap forward, even if it doesn't seem like it at first glance.

Apple iPhone 3GS (artwork has no connection to the official EISA awards panel and is purely fictional)

The ever-growing importance of companies becoming eco-friendly also got a nod from EISA, and while there were plenty of eco phones that were either light-weight versions of normal phones (mostly in packaging) or low-end phones, the LG KM900 Arena won the European Green award by being the "greenest fully featured mobile phone on the market today". The retail package is said to be the best in terms of eco friendliness as were the build components of the phone itself. The emphasis seems to be that "feature-rich" and "green" can fit very comfortably in the description of one phone, no compromises necessary.

LG KM900 Arena

Sure, some people won't agree with these awards. The iPhone platform for example was patted on the back for having its smart function upgraded. Indeed those were just holes in the core functionality that begged for plugging for quite some time now, but Apple have done a nice job in updating the software platform to a more mature level.

If you're interested, you might as well check out last year's EISA awards and see what we were up to last August.

Read more »

Upcoming Smartphone Nokia 6730 will pack GPS

Today Nokia announced their latest smartphone handset, running as usually on the S60 OS. Providing decent mid-range functionality, the Nokia 6730 classic will be an exclusive offering for Vodafone customers around the world.

The most notable features of the Nokia 6730 classic are its Symbian S60 3rd edition UI and the built-in GPS with A-GPS support. There is also a 3.2 megapixel autofocus snapper onboard as well as FM radio, Bluetooth and USB. A microSD card slot takes care of extending the 48 MB of internal memory.

The quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE Nokia 6730 classic comes with a 2.2" 16M color display of QVGA resolution. The high-speed network connectivity is also taken care of with dual-band UMTS with both HSDPA and HSUPA support onboard. Unfrotunately, Wi-Fi is not available.

Nokia 6730 will start shipping across Vodafone world-wide starting from June. Its retail price however is yet to be disclosed.

Read more »

Nokia's E52 Unleashed - Battery Powerhouse at 8 hours of talk

Check it suits, Nokia just spat another E-series device into the boardroom. What the E52 lacks in looks it makes up for with battery specs: 8 hours of talk or 23 days of standby. Otherwise it's an A-GPS, WiFi, HSUPA data, and 3.2 megapixel candybar with generous support for your IT environments via built-in mobile VPN, Call Connect, and choice of corporate email options including Nokia Messaging, Exchange, and yes, Lotus Notes too for all you accountants. Ships in the second half of the year for €245, pre-subsidy and pre-tax. Get your corporate funk on with the video after the break

Read more »

Nokia report 90 percent less profit in Q1, but sell 5800 like hotdogs

Nokia reported their financial status at the end of Q1 this year and it does not sound good. The biggest phone manufacturer at this stage has 90% profit drop, 27% sales drop and the Finns even started to cut some slack positions. Sure sounds like an economic downturn, doesn't it?

Yep, the financial crisis didn't spare the current number one mobile phone manufacturer - Nokia. They announced their Q1 financial status and there are huge drops in every one aspect.

First and most terrifying is the profit drop - the current profit calculates in 122 million euro compared to the Q1 2008 when it was 1.2 billion euro. It's 90% down.

Next are the sales of course. This year Nokia made 9.28 billion euro, but in Q1 2008 the company succeed to make 12.7 billion euro. The difference is 27% down.

In time of crisis the first step is job cutting and here it comes. Nokia gave the axe to 1700 employees worldwide only in March.

But, hey it's not as bad as it sounds. The company shares rose with 8 percent in the last months.

Nokia also claims that in the last quarter they sold 2.8 million units of the popular touch-based 5800 XpressMusic and that they would have sold many more had not they been a bit underpowered. As of now they will be shipping a million 5800 units every month.

Nobody really knows when the economic downturn will end, but Nokia still stand their position as a top manufacturer with 37% market share (2% down compared to Q1 2008).

Read more »

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in silver and we've got the pics to prove it

The original announcement of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic promised three color versions: Red, Blue and Black. Up until now only the red and blue ones have been available, but the grey-striped one will finally hit the shelves as well and here are the live shots to prove it.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Black official photo

Call it Black, call it Black/Silver, or call it Grey if you prefer. Whatever it is, the main thing about the new color of Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is that it looks much more serious now. The red and blue stripes of the well-known versions are now silverish.

Except for the more decent look of the Black/Silver Nokia 5800 XpressMusic behind the new clothes there's still the well known all-in-one multimedia monster.

And here are some live photos

There's the 3.2" touchscreen, the Wi-Fi support, the built-in GPS receiver, the great music player, the powerful stereo speakers and all the other goodies that turned Nokia 5800 XpressMusic into one of the most anticipated and desired handsets announced lately.

Read more »

Nokia Photo Browser is now out for Symbian S60 smartphones

The cool photo browser available until now only for 5800 XpressMusic is finally released for the S60 3rd Edition. It gives the users a whole new experience while managing and enjoying their images.

Nokia Beta Labs released today the Photo Browser for all handsets running Symbian S60 3rd Edition with FP1 and FP2. There are two versions of the installation package - one for the accelerometer-featured devices and one for those without accelerometer. You can download both of them from the Beta Labs web site.

The Nokia Photo Browser was currently available only for the touch-based Nokia 5800, but now most of the N-series users can enjoy it. Well, it won't be exactly the same without the touch-screen, but at least it'll be prettier than the current gallery.

The new app has 3D interface and uses beautiful effects while browsing.

Read more »

Multi-touch coming to for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, sort of

Yes, you read it right. A developer created a simple game introducing the multi-touch implementation. The application itself reminds the popular Guitar Hero console games, but its breakthrough may established a whole new path in the mobile software.

Jamie Fuller, a UK programmer, successfully created the first multi-touch application for Symbian S60 5th edition or Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in particular. The app it's still at it's alpha stage, but you can easily get the idea.

The real news today is that the multi-touch game called Space Dancer is now available as a free download from Jamie Fuller's website. The basic game reminds of the popular console series Guitar Hero, where your objective is to touch the correct music notes flying on screen in accordance to the currently playing music track.

Up until not long ago it was considered impossible running multi-touch apps on resistive touchscreen displays but there are some companies such as Stantum, for instance, that are already working successfully on the task.

Now we see the same feat managed by a third-party developer using only software methods - and best of all, running on a popular handset. The exciting opportunities are overwhelming.

If we've got you interested, you can watch the short video demo below showing the application in its early stages almost two months ago.

Read more »

Nokia E75 hits stores, ready for heavy-duty corporate emailing

Nokia E75 - one of two business minded handsets presented at the MWC '09 - is now available in stores. The side-sliding S60 smartphone with QWERTY keypad caught our attention in Barcelona with its excellent built quality, worldwide HSDPA coverage, Wi-Fi and GPS.

But Nokia E75 has even more tricks up its sleeve. Not only does it have two keyboards but it has two homescreens - one for your work day and one leisure time. It's really not all work and no play with the Nokia E75 - it comes with a 3.5 mm audio jack, stereo Bluetooth, a 3.15 MP autofocus camera with VGA video recording and even N-Gage gaming support.

Nokia E75

That said, Nokia E75 best selling point is messaging. The handset is the first to ship with the updated Nokia Messaging push email service, which recently added Hotmail to the already extensive email support including Mail for Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes Traveler.

Nokia says that the E75 supports 90% of the world's corporate-used email setups. The email client can also handle subfolders and HTML, all to be displayed on the 2.4" QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) screen.

Other Nokia perks are not overlooked either - E75 ships with Nokia Maps and Ovi Files. Ovi Files is a service for storing files online, which is a nice addition to the 4 GB microSD card that comes with the device.

Read more »

Nokia releases Point & Find, Updates Nokia Messaging

Nokia launched their new Point & Find service into beta today and updated Nokia Messaging to support Windows Live Hotmail. Point & Find allows you to snap a photo of something and be directed to relevant information and content.

The beta of Point & Find is available in the UK and US and is focused on movies but the service will expand into other fields and countries. Nokia see this as a way for stores and companies to launch campaigns and promotions by giving easy access to information on products and services.

Nokia has offered support for embedding data into barcodes for a while now - Nokia Mobile Codes lets you generate either a Datamatrix or QR code with link, text or business card info embedded into it.

Point & Find takes this a step further. With it you can shoot a photo of a movie poster and be directed to content like the trailer, reviews and even info on the closest theaters showing the movie, taking advantage of the GPS capabilities of the phones.As a fallback, there's a category specific text search in case you have nothing handy to photograph. It can also recognize barcodes so you can scan the barcode of a product and get product reviews and other info. The other bit of news that came out of Espoo is that Nokia's push email service - Nokia Messaging - has added support for Windows Live Hotmail in addition to the already supported Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and AOL Mail.

Nokia Messaging push email service is currently free and supports 19 Nokia devices and gives you access to up to 10 email accounts. Nokia 5800 is not supported yet, that will happen in May. Nokia E75 will become the first device with the application preinstalled and it will probably be found on future devices as well.

Read more »

AT&T gets heavy on messaging with 6 new QWERTY handsets

Samsung announced 6 new entries to its mobile phones portfolio today. The emphasis is quite obviously on texting with all 6 of their new offerings featuring full QWERTY keyboard. The leader of the pack is Nokia E71x, followed by three Samsung handsets - Propel Pro, Impression and Magnet and two LG devices - Neon and Xenon.The Nokia E71x isn't really any different from its European sibling, save for the new paintjob. The bar is the slimmest smartphone to date and sports a 2.36" 16M color QVGA display.

Nokia E71x

Nokia E71x

It will also feature a GPS receiver a 3 megapixel auto focus camera and of course - HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity. A built-in microSD card slot will allow expanding the internal memory with up to 16GB worth of additional storage.

The Nokia E71x will be available in the following weeks across AT&T stores for 150 US dollars on a 2 year contract.

Samsung Propel Pro

The Samsung Propel Pro comes as a direct successor of the Samsung A767 Propel, extending its functionality quite extensively. Running on the Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard it packs Wi-Fi, GPS and a 2.55" square display with a resolution of 320 x 320 pixels.

Samsung Propel Pro

The Samsung Propel Pro has a 528 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM. Its other important features include 3G with HSDPA support, microSD card slot, Bluetooth, USB and a 3 megapixel autofocus camera.

You can find the Propel Pro in the AT&T stores starting from April 14. In order to walk out with it you will have to part with 150 US dollars and sign a two-year contract.

Samsung Impression

Next in line is the side-slider Samsung Impression. Its highlight feature is the 3.2" AMOLED touchscreen of WQVGA resolution, which according to AT&T is a first for the US. In addition to it the handset comes with quad-band GSM and dual-band UMTS with HSDPA support.

Samsung Impression

The other key features of Samsung Impression are Bluetooth with A2DP, microSD card slot and a 3 megapixel camera with video recording capabilities.

The Samsung Impression will be available from April 7 for 200 US dollars on a two-year contract.

Samsung Magnet

The Samsung Magnet is a simple offering, targeted at the younger audience. Sporting great messaging capabilities thanks to the full QWERTY keyboard it will be the most affordable of the bunch. However AT&T haven't yet published the full specifications of the device so all we can tell you is that it will be an entry-level offering.

Samsung Magnet

The Samsung Magnet will hit the shelves in the coming weeks.

LG Neon

LG Neon is an exact replica of the LG KS360, which we reviewed not too long ago. It is a mid-ranger that catches the eye with bold colors and quirky controls. Its main features include a 2.4" display, a 2 megapixel snapper and Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support.

LG Neon

FM radio is also onboard and so are stereo Bluetooth, microSD card slot and FM radio.

The Neon will be available quite shortly for 100 US dollars on a two-year contract.

LG Xenon

The LG Xenon comes with haptic feedback for improving the touchscreen experience. The quad-band GSM and dual-band UMTS (with HSDPA support) handset sports a 2.8" 65K color WQVGA display.

LG Xenon

Its other features include 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, USB and a microSD card slot.

The LG Xenon will be available shortly across AT&T stores but its pricing still remains to be disclosed.

Read more »

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic gets new firmware update

Today Nokia released new firmware update for the 5800 XpressMusic. Being quite a major release it brings improvements in a number of areas. According to Nokia it should improve the performance and the user interface as well as add some new applications.

The new firmware version brings in the Mobile Dictionary and Application Update Apps to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The first one offers you voice playback and text-to-speech, supporting 38 languages.

As the name suggests Application Update manages the new updates for your installed apps, making them easy to keep up to date.

The 5800 XpressMusic new firmware revision also brings two new camera features. The first is the burst mode, which allows the primary camera to take multiple photos with a single key press. The second is enabling the secondary camera to take photos. Up until now it could only be used for video-calling.

As usually lots of bug-fixes and performance improvements complete the change log. According to Nokia the 5800 XpressMusic handsets that get the new firmware should have faster user interface and greater download speeds.

Considering the enormous popularity of the 5800 XpressMusic it's hardly surprising that Nokia are rushing to fix all those irritating bugs that plague its first S60 full touch handset. Despite some hardware issues it had recently, the handset is selling in volumes, making it quite likely that this is not the last firmware update it will see.

Read more »

Nokia unveil 5730, 5330 XpressMusic and 5030 handsets

The new trio by Nokia doesn't seem so groundbreaking as some of you might have hoped, but it expands the music-centric portfolio of the company with some nice new handsets with balanced functionality. Nokia 5730 XpressMusic has already leaked in the past with quite a few details on its specifications, and now this unusual QWERTY-enabled music handset is finally officially out.

Quite similar to the Nokia E75, the new Nokia 5730 XpressMusic runs on the Symbian S60 OS and has got a 2.4-inch 16M color QVGA display, built-in GPS receiver, Wi-Fi and USB connectivity. Some of the other extras include a 3.2 Megapixel snapper with Carl Zeiss lens and 3G with video-call support.

Nokia 5730 XpressMusic

Music-centric features include the stereo speakers, the dedicated 3.5-mm audio jack, a stereo FM radio, and stereo Bluetooth support. There will also be an 8GB memory card included in the retail package.Much like the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic that was presented at this year's MWC, the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic comes with N-gage support and the the innovative Say-and-Play feature that allows you to control the music player with your voice only. There's also the Music presence with Ovi Contacts, which shows you what music your Ovi friends are listening to right now.

Nokia 5030 XpressRadio

Nokia 5030 is the Nokia's first phone with an internal FM radio antenna, which eliminates the need for a headset to be connected. The Nokia 5030 is also the first device to come out under the XpressRadio branding. The Nokia 5030 XpressRadio has one touch FM radio and station selection keys on the side for easier control. When placed sideways on the table, the back of the handset looks just like any portable FM radio unit.

Nokia 5030

Targeted at the emerging markets, the Nokia 5030 offers some of the differentiating Nokia entry level features such as a built-in flashlight and the speaking clock and alarm. It has dual-band GSM support and runs on the entry-level S30 user interface. The 1.8-inch display has a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels.

Read more »