Nokia Q4 results are out and things are looking a bit better for people’s company (yes.. i said the the people’s company) with well over 1 million lumia 800 & 701 devices sold, it’s  less than the 2 million targets that they had but if you ask me  , it’s a good start for a company that changed Os and focus and with in 6 months made an amazing and sexy device such as the lumia 800. So with that good start and a cool $250 million this quarter from Microsoft all i have to say is keep it up nokia!

you find other numbers here (including how much money they lost in 2011)

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Yes boys and girls!  according to the latest online rumors the nokia lumia 900 will be out on march 18th for $99.99 on  a two-year contract. The information came from Boy genius report who said that it came from a source close to the carrier (AT&T), so we don’t know how true it is but nokia did say they will be marketing the nokia lumia 900  aggressively so the rumors may have more truth to it then anything else we have heard so far.

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Good news for everyone on facebook (so good new for everyone pretty much) Nokia has  launched a new competition on there Lndonesia facebook fan page, where you could win a lumia 800 or lumia 701 windows phone.

The best thing about  the “Nokia Time Machine” competition is however  how easy it is to enter, all you have to do is share your best memories of your first nokia device….that’s it! to enter just go to nokia’s Lndonesia facebook fan page

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Guess who is back?

As you have heard for weeks, the new Nokia Phone is now out. Today here, I shall tell you what I liked, hated and loved from this Smartphone that kindly Mr. Nokia sent me a couple of weeks ago. In this while, I tested it and took photos, social networking and all capable a Nokia would. Let’s think that the Lumia 800 is N9’s lost half brother, both of the same father, different mother.

Firstly let me tell you, the design is just awesome. Same as the N9, it also looks and feels like a fine jewel. That the screen is shiny and beautiful for the eyes and fingers alike, smooth as silk. The body is soft plastic, called polycarbonate by Nokia, which is another fancy word for it.

The Lumia comes in two storage variants 16 and 64GB and in 3 colours: Nokia Blue, Black & Pink, each one of them look trendy and hot. On the upper side  the jacklead input slot can be found, next to it, you find the microUSB slot for charging and sync purposes & finally in the last place you’ll find the microSIM slot. Unfortunately there is no expandable micro SD port, so you will be stuck with whatever storage variant you pay for. On the right side of the phone you find 4 buttons. Going from up to down the first two ones are the volume controls, which in fact are made of metal, next to them is the lock/unlock control and in the far side you find the dedicated camera button. On the bottom side there is a speaker, which I have found to be fairly good and loud. The left side is clean of buttons. On the back side you’ll find the Carl-Seizz camera of 8MxP, above it you can see the dual-led flash, useful during those night events and parties, but be warned, the king of camera phones is still the Nokia N8. This Smartphone comes with a AMOLED 3,7 inch screen, 480x800p, process at 1.4GHz, , Wi Fi, 3G capable, GPS  and Bluetooth. Weird, no NFC.

Loaded with Windows Phone 7 Mango (7.5 actually) makes it tempting. Will it be good, will it be bad? In a world that has embraced iOS & Android as the main platforms because everyone talks about them, WP7 feels like a kind of outcast from the new world order. So let’s find out what makes this phone so special.    As told before this phone is charged with a Windows Phone 7 OS; to untrained eyes will think, at first glance, it is just an N9, but this is the son of the two biggest tech companies in the world. Along with Nokia services such as Nokia Maps something Nokia excels at, you will also find the world-famous Microsoft services inside such as the Microsoft Marketplace, Internet Explorer, Office and the Xbox Live, to mention some. What some people may like and some not is the absence of a physical keyboard, but coming from a QWERTY device, myself didn’t find the virtual keyboard bad. Everything in the screen looks vivid and colorful, and looks better compared to my Nokia N9 or previous Nokia phones I have owned, which is much saying.

To use the Microsoft services and as well, the marketplace in a more smooth way in the PC you have use the Zune software given by Microsoft for free. This is very much like iTunes, you can use it for playing and syncing your multimedia and also to purchase new content as movies, tv shows, music and apps all for your phone. The experience with this mix is great.

Previously mentioned, the Marketplace is where you can find the apps. Let’s dig some apps I have found good and useful.

From the most known & popular to the lost jewels. The most popular messaging known is Whatsapp. This was recently presented to be available in the new ecosystem, which is an advantage compared to N9’s MeeGo . One of my personal recommendations is Tango, a videochat whatsapp-like app. Your contacts using tango will automatically synch with your phone;  its easy and has good video quality, but it is a shame there is no front facing camera on the Lumia, this app would be a killer app, just like FaceTime is for Apple, but cross-platform (there is a Symbian client).

If you get lost easily, the Nokia Maps can get you out of that despair and send you back to your home, this is Nokia’s selling point. Nokia plans to offer Nokia’s turn by turn navigation only to those phones made by the Finnish company, this way it helps differentiate Nokia from other Windows Phone manufacturer. To let you know, many apps are free, some cost and others offer a demo before you get convinced.  Wanted to recommend Netflix, but since it is not available in my region I couldn’t try it. With the forementioned Office you can read, view and edit all your .doc, .docx, .pps, .ppsx or .xls on the go. There is a strong ecosystem here, pushed mostly because of Microsoft’s name.

The homescreen seen in the first picture can be editable as you feel pleased, as well it can be coloured as you like and how ever is your mood. There are different tiles which the users may add, change or remove as will, they will work like widgets as in other Symbian phones.

An assistant is aboard in your Nokia Windows Phone 7, who I like to call “Luminia”, and since it is a woman’s voice I can feel some kind of attachment to her (if you like women voices, that is). Mostly of the time she will hear correctly,  like 87% of the time, on other occasions, she will ask you to repeat your order again, which can be frustrating (can be set to various languages). All apps can be opened with the voice-command, to talk to Luminia just hold the Windows Logo and she will ask what is your command. Your incoming Facebook messages or sms can be read by her with an understable voice, just as your secretary would do. Manual texting on the Lumia is very easy and while you write the message there is an autocorrect list that will show your possible word, in case you are writing it wrong. Browsing is a great experience, there is no flash support, but this is something some may not care.

Battery life is something to consider, while I have some more tests to do, I have managed to make 12 hours on average at work with some use which include data connection, email reading, scarce web browsing, reading tweeter, a few calls, some whatsapp texting and no video, no music at all. There is room for battery improvement , but I will be satisfied as long as the phones makes it home after a complete 8 hour work shift.

To wrap it up, I can say that this is Nokia’s best shot in some years. I’m one of those hard Nokia fans who doubted on Elop’s strategy dumping MeeGo and embracing WP, I even bought a N9 just  because I thought this would be ‘last’ real Nokia’s flagship, but after trying the Lumia 800 I can tell that I’m very satisfied with what the deal of Nokia and Microsoft has done. There is much room for improvements, but the system is stable, and fun to use. If there is something we have learned in these years is that people are not completely interested in specs or looks, but with the overall experience;  most consumers will love the simplicity of the Lumia and will adore the breath-taking design, which makes it stand out of other Windows Phone vendors, while retaining Nokia’s footprint enough to make us Nokia’s hard fans happy. There are still some improvements to be done on the system, but today Nokia has released a phone that will catch the attention of the regular consumers.

See it this way: it’s just a win-win-win situation. Nokia needed an OS with a strong ecosystems for developers and consumers to regain market share, Microsoft needed an OEM to distribute their small-shared OS, and us people will get an awesome device, combining the best of both companies’ world.

by Luis Castro

edited by dcastrog

The great guys at Nokia wom world (now called Nokia connects)  are having a “follow the Mapstronaut and win” competition to celebrate the launch of the new Nokia Maps blog. The goal is to go where no one has gone before on Nokia Maps and to do that they are taking suggestions of places to visit from you! i mean us

As a matter of fact I have already entered and the mapstronaut visited my location not to long ago….

That’s the Stadio Olympico in rome by the way, home to one of my favorite football/soccer teams.

So if you guys would like to enter jump over here where you’ll find the rules and the prizes that you can win! have a good one!

A sight to the future?

We first learn about MeeGo about 1 year ago, Nokia needed an OS to replace the old decaying Symbian, and that’s when it teamed up with Intel  to deliver the OS that would rule the world just as Symbian did not much ago. But then, on February 2011 Nokia anounced a new shift in their OS strategy. They were going to parter up with Microsoft and release Windows Phone on their new handsets, ditching MeeGo, before any device running it was released.

We saw leaks of the famous N950, the one device running MeeGo and sporting a qwerty keyboard. Later Nokia would announce that they would release the N950 for developers only and the N9 (non qwerty) for the rest of us non-developers, then, there wouldt be no more MeeGo handsets. They will focus on the Windows Phones. This leaves the just released N9 in the shadows, most developers are not very interested in developing apps for an OS that is going to disappear after one device, leaving it in the hands of the MeeGo-Maemo-Linux community. Perhaps one of the best handsets Nokia has released in the last 5 years, you will soon learn why.

The simplest, the most elegant.

The retail box is the smallest Nokia has done until now. You can see how Nokia is making packages smaller every year. Inside there is only the necessary space for the N9, the charger, data cable, headset and instructions leaflets. This goes perfectly with the minimalistic style the N9 has.

The whole N9′s body is made of one pice of soft polycarbonate. The 3,9″ screen is georgeous, shiny, curved and looks like a precious gem, kind of reminds me of an obsidian stone when the display is turned off. Swiping the fingers over the screen is a pleasure, haven’t touched a smoother screen on any other handset ever. There is a micro usb port on the top, along with a 3.5mm plug and the micro sim card tray. The volume, and lock/power buttons on the right side, on the bottom you will find thespeakers and a 8MPX camera on the back with dual LED flash. The whole device feels premium in the hand, and I will say it again: it’s like holding a precious, shiny gem.

To turn it on/off you should press the lock button for 3 seconds. Took me a while to figure it out, of course, I didn’t read the instructions. After the phone has booted up you are greeted with 3 main homescreens. The first one is the news feed, then the app menu, and the multitasking homscreen. In the newsfeed you can set up your twitter timeline along with your facebook feed and news by AP. You can choose what feed to show in case you dont need to read the news on the newsfeed. If you tap on a feed you will be taken to the twitter/facebook app where you can add comments or like stuff. The app menu is classic app grid where you choose what app to open, you may edit the layout by holding the tap.

The multitasking screen shows you what apps are open in a mini window that’s running live. You can close the apps by holding the tap and taping on the cross mark. These 3 homescreen sound pretty simple, but what makes this phone stand above others is what Nokia calls ‘Swipe’ After opening an app you can do 4 kinds of swipe. To do a swipe you must put your finger on the outer border of the screen and move to the oposite directin. You may do a swipe in 4 directions; if you swipe from left or right the app running will go to the multitasking menu and continue running in the background. If you swipe from the bottom you may go to the multitasking menu or if you stop the swipe halfway, a shortcut menu will appear with apps like phone, contacts, camera and broswer. If you swipe from top to bottom you will close the app, taking you to the multitasking menu.

Everything runs smooth and it’s really a joy to use. Of course,  there is a learning curve, but after the first 15 minutes you are set to go. Also, reading the instruction manual may help a lot . The integration is excelent. By entering your facebook and twitter account info, your contacts will be saved on your contact book along with your phone numbers agenda. You can then choose to combine them under one name. The message app will integrate facebook chat, and SMS conversations in one convenient place.

The facebook app I must say is a bit laggy and crashes very often, but lets you do most things you can expect. The Twitter app, on the other hand is great, a bit slow, but great in features, that it almost matches gravity for symbian. Still there is room for improvements.

The camera is good. The usual options are there, and, wow! It’s very fast taking pictures, but it doesn’t match the N8 in terms of quality, making the N8 the king of camera phones. Also, the lack of physical button doesn’t help either, so you have to use the in screen shutter to take pictures. This is the reason I’m keeping my N8 too, as my camera phone. The speakers sound ok, enough power and good quality, nothing outstanding. The reception and call quality is 100% Nokia.

The phone is fast, have tried opening 20 apps at the same time and there is no lag.  The battery is not that outstanding, I can manage 10 hours with moderate to heavy use, so you should take your charger just in case. There is a map app and a drive app. I still don’t understand why did Nokia made them separately.

I tried the Nokia Store, but there are not many apps out there yet, as I said before, most developers dont want to invest money and time developing apps for an ecosystem that won’t exist later in 3 years. This is also one of the reasons I need to keep my N8, since there is no Whatsapp version for MeeGo and I use it a lot. Leaving the N9 in the hands of the loyal Maemo/MeeGo community

who are very commited to this OS. However, if Nokia wants to sell the phone, they also need the help of commercial apps (hello, whatsapp?).

Is it the end?

As conclusion, the N9 represents what Nokia could have been if it had followed their own path. After the deal with Microsoft, Nokia had to let go the projects they were working and commit 100% to windows phone, they cannot keep 2 top OS, or else they would cannibalize each other, or could they?  The swipe part is the most revolutionary of the N9. There is no multitasking button, there is no close button, everything is done by gestures and this is what Nokia intended to: start a new era in UI, based in gestures and leaving buttons (either hardware of software) behind.

The N9 delivers a complete package of power and style, I’m very pleased with the design and I’m happy to see that Nokia is reusing it on its new phone: the Nokia 800 Lumia. I just hope to see more Nokia’s integration in future Windows Mobile phones, maybe we will see the Swipe in a future?

For now we can only dream what the N9 could have been and enjoy one of the last real Nokia device, keeping one shiny piece of history.

dcastrog

I have been thinking about why I like the n9 so much and I am I willing to spend
almost $6000 TTD on it without having even used it yet and on a platform that many
think is already dead and the truth is, I really don't know why I want the n9, when it comes to
gadgets "anything but simple" is what I like to say, I like customization and I love sitting
down for hours setting up a new device just the way I want it.

So why do I want the n9? Well maybe it's because I just like having the latest gadgets or
maybe I'm just a big nokia fanboy or maybe I have gone mad and have nothing better to
do with my money......it could be one of those but I would like to think it's because the
n9 is so new and so different for the other.

The n9 brings something never see on a mobile phone before and yes! I know these days
every phone has something never see/done on phones before it but with the n9 it's not
just one new app or one new feature, almost everything is new about the n9, it's about
a new way of using a phone, a new way of thinking, a new way of living with you mobile
device, and I must say out of all the great new features in the n9 I think the swipe home
feature is what I like the most. And just to make something clear the "all touch screen, no
keys" thing isn't really new, it's something meego/maemo had from the start if you really think about, other than
the keyboard keys, the n900 had not keys on the front just like the n9 but that's not here
nor there.

So why do I want the n9? Well because it's something new and the swipe home feature
look really nice, simple, as does the hole OS. The n9 is simple and easy to understand and
use but it also has to the tools that allow you to make it the device you want to make it
plus I really like the design of the body.

So again why do I want the n9? Because it's what I've wanted all this time, I just didn't

know. So blue n9 here I come.

The Meego powerhouse is said to be available in singapore this month  from all telcos. The N9 will be sold sim free and unlocked  for a retail price of $799 for the 16GB version and $899 for the 64GB version.

info via 

Ever since nokia announced that they were making windows phone 7 there main OS I have more or less fallen out of the blogging game, mainly because I didn’t understand or support their decision however over time I came to a better understanding of why they did what they did, I didn’t support it 100% but I understood, so as nokia got ready to move to wp7 and kill off symbian, My self and many other nokia fans just stood back waited to see something from nokia to make us happy and excited again.

Then they announced the Nokia N9 and I just like everyone else was happy again, I loved nokia again, I wanted to blog about nokia again and from no way nokia were back in the game, until I really started to think about it, I stated thinking about what would be a good  reason why nokia would move to wp7 after seeing what meego could do months before anyone else did, why would you leave an OS that had much promise to go with one that little to no one likes?  I would have understood if they said meego would not be ready on time and it couldn’t ship this year or if symbain couldn’t be update to match the like of android, so they had to move to wp7 to save them self, If they said something like that I would be able to level with them and say “yes, it’s time for a change” but you can’t show me a fully operational meego device with no buttons, a new swipe home interface with the best multitasking ever seen on a phone and expect me to say “yes move to an OS that is basically trying to do the same thing that meego is doing just that it doesn’t look as good or works as well.

I know some people think that they are two completely different OS and to those  people I ask: what is Microsoft’s aim with wp7? it’s to make everything simple and easy, an easy to navigate UI that keeps you connected to your friends, family and social networks…right? yes! now let me ask you this: when you look at the meego OS what do you see? A simple and easy to navigate UI, right? yes! and when you look at the notification screen on meego what do you see? A place that keeps you connected and up to date with  friends, family and social networks. right? yes!  what’s the differences between them? you ask, The look and feel! when you look at the home screen of wp7 what do you see? two rows of colored moving boxes, now look at the home screen of meego, what do you see? a new bright fresh Ui with colorful  icons.

An other difference  is that meego comes with more than half of the things that Microsoft is now trying to put into wp7 for example: Multitasking, meego was built with multitasking in mind, as a matter of  fact, the hole OS was built around multitasking and I really like that. To me being simple don’t mean plain and that is why I think meego has beaten wp7 at it’s own game but anyways back to to what I was saying.

So they announced the N9 and everyone is happy and likes nokia again, until we look at meego and wp7 and realize just how bad making the decision to move to windows phones 7 really was, so at this point everyone is a little mad and we’re all thinking “fine! move to wp7, i’m just going to get the n9..f#ck wp7” and that was a good plan but big boss Elop knew we would do that, so to make sure we all didn’t just get the n9 and forget about wp7 and making him look bad for making a bad decision, he more or less killed n9 before it even came out by making it only available in a very very limited amount if countries, Mexico &  Malaysia being the only places known so far.

So now being  die hard nokia fans means that we have to watch them hopefully fail with wp7 run back to meego and work there way back to the up with meego being the main OS, symbian on the lower priced phones and wp7 on the touchscreen feature phones.

Ohh Nokia.

Hey guys, Today I have got a nice little review of the nokia e7 that I got from the boys and girls at womworld/nokia, so watch and enjoy the video below and thanks to the Womworld guys again.

What do you guys think about the nokia e7 and i’m planing on getting the nokia e6 good idea?

(not seeing the video?…..reload the page again )