Nokia fans post up super Lumia 920 ad on Vimeo!

   Nokia's Lumia 920 might be the company's flagship at the moment and it's supposedly a relatively popular device and there are seemingly some very dedicated fans, either that or some students just wanted to showcase their media design skills!

   The fan made video, embedded below, offers up the key features of the Lumia 920, in a really professional looking video! If you've got a couple of minutes spare then it's well worth a watch and if the producers are lucky they might even get a thank you from Nokia in one form or another!

   Check the video out and let us know what you think of it in the comments below!

Phong Luong Via Ubergizmo.

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Elop hints at Nokia tablets, justifies Windows Phone focus and says Nokia is all about standing out!

   Nokia may finally have brought themselves some success with their latest range of Lumia handsets and continued sales of their budget devices in developing markets, but we're still missing one thing from the Finns and that's a tablet. Understandably Nokia is focused on their handset business because that is the core of the company and this is something we've seen HTC do lately too, because of their falling handset sales.

   So it's interesting when we hear Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, talk about tablets and that's exactly what he did in an interview with Australia's Financial Review. Elop revealed that his company is taking a close look at the tablet space and he said that:

“We haven’t announced tablets at this point, but it is something we are clearly looking at very closely... We are studying very closely the market right now as Microsoft has introduced the Surface tablet, so we are trying to learn from that and understand what the right way to participate would be and at what point in time.”

   Despite watching from the sidelines at the moment he did say that in the coming months and years that Nokia will look to, 'broaden out the portfolio, which means pushing to lower and lower price points, in some cases smaller form factors and so forth,' so a tablet isn't out of the question yet!

   When pressed on the normal Windows vs. Android question Elop said that it makes a lot more sense for both a phone and tablet to have an operating system and experience in common, although like always he didn't rule out the possibility of using something other than Microsoft's creations in the future. Elop makes his point perfectly when he says:

"When you think about the Lumia 920, running on Windows phone, having a Windows tablet or PC or Xbox is something that will give us the opportunity to have a pretty integrated experience. Our first focus on what we look at is clearly in the Microsoft side." 

   So there's no change on that front and we do have to agree that integration is very useful and his argument is fully justifiable here. Indeed, his response to the question of using Android is very robust too. He argued that:

“On the Android side, we were very worried that we would be entering Android late relative to everyone else in the industry, that perhaps one vendor was already well on the road to being the dominant Android vendor at the expense of everyone else... If we look back two years to when we made the decisions,then Samsung was big, HTC was pretty big and Motorola was pretty big. Of course what has happened in the two years is that Samsung has captured the lion’s share of it and the others have been squeezed down to much smaller market share. We were worried about exactly that pattern forming.”

   So with that in mind Elop is keen on Nokia focusing their efforts on differentiating their Windows Phones from everyone else's offerings. He said that Nokia's R&D is now heavily invested in making the company 'stand out' and naturally the PureView camera technology is a big part of that. Nokia think that:

“Photography is one case where we can make a big difference. You can put our device next to everyone else, including some of the ones just announced in the last day or so and say "boom this is so much better."”

This focus ties in very nicely with a story which The Guardian posted today which suggests that there will be a Lumia device arriving this summer with the same beefy 41MP camera which Nokia forced inside their 808 PureView!

   We'll have to wait and see on that one, but we would be genuinely excited for some Lumia tablets. Nokia typically has stunning design and that combined with a good dose of Windows 8 may well be enough to tempt people who aren't touched by Microsoft's Surface tablets! What would you like to see? More Lumia's or some tablets from Finland's finest? Let us know in the comments below!

AFW Via TechCrunch and TheGuardian.

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Nokia has a better Q4! Can't fix 2012 as a whole!

   Nokia has finally got themselves back into profit! Q4 2012 turned out to be quite a success with the company posting a €439 million ($585 million) profits as they saw revenue work out at €8.04 billion ($10.73 billion).

   This turn around isn't so much to do with the handset business, rather it is attributed to the growth of Nokia's Siemens Network which had a good quarter! But, devices and services did also manage to see a small profit too!

   This means that Nokia finally had a good holiday quarter! It was actually the best one that the company has managed since they chose to hope onto the Windows Phone bandwagon. That's not to say that the Lumia range is super hot stuff at the moment, indeed the guys from Espoo shipped out 4.4 million Lumias and only 700,000 landed in the hands of consumers in North America, so they still haven't managed to crack the vital US market. The highlight of the roll call was the Lumia 920 which managed to bump up the average selling price of Nokia smartphones to €186 from €140, which undoubtedly helped bump up profits.

   Despite the profit for the first time in a while Nokia decided to suspend the dividend on their shares for this year! This was the first time the company has done this in at least 143 years! Nokia managed to push through both World Wars and still didn't have to do this! But, strangely it's not actually considered a negative thing by the markets! Eric Beaudet from Natixis Security in Paris said that this “is a very important step because it shows management is conscious of the work that is ahead... It’s clearly a strong signal to the market that says 'Don’t worry about our balance sheet, we’ll do what it takes.'”

   What do you think 2013 holds for Nokia? Let us know in the comments below! The full PDF of the results is available at the source link below!

Via Nokia and Bloomberg.

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19/12/2012: HTC cut backs start, Zuckerberg gives half a billion to charity, Samsung issues Exynos statement and much more!

HTC to cut back on device development and cutting Q1 shipments?

   Ohhh HTC, the company we all know and love for their use of premium materials and tiny batteries in their latest smartphones. It seems things really are starting to look bad for the Taiwanese manufacturer if Digitimes’ industry sources have got this one right. 

   Digitimes' sources believe that:

“HTC has suspended development of a number of new models for 2013, reducing the visibility of its orders for handset components.”

   They believe that HTC expects to see smartphone shipments rise somewhere in the region of 10-15% in Q1 next year, which is down compared to the 20-30% growth they saw in the same quarter this year!

   The reason HTC will welcome in the new year in miserable style is in part due to HTC’s Windows 8 smartphones, the 8X and 8S which have not set the world ablaze the way HTC and Microsoft had hoped, despite Nokia 'selling out' of their Lumia 920's.

   HTC seems to be stuck between pillar and post at the moment; they're aiming for a flagship set of phones per year, but they've been forced to develop more to generate extra sales. This is at the same time that Samsung and Apple have run away with the smartphone sales and even Sony has over taken HTC in sales in the UK!

   The HTC M7 or whatever the European equivalent of the Droid DNA turns out to be will be able to turn HTC's fortunes around assuming they can get it to market sooner rather than later. But, we fear a lot of people will be waiting to see what Samsung's Galaxy S4 will be as they will go out of their way to trump HTC's offering! HTC haven't commented on the issue, but we will update the post if we hear back from HTC!
Digitimes Via DroidDog.

Mark Zuckerberg gives $500million of shares to charity. That's what we call Christmas spirit!

   No matter what you think of Mark Zuckerberg it's hard to offer criticism for his latest good deed; a donation of $500 million of shares (that's 18million shares) in Facebook to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. This charity helps various organisations with health and education provisions, so it is certainly worthwhile! The full quote posted on Zuckerberg's Facebook Timeline is embedded below!

Two years ago, Priscilla and I signed The Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of the money we earn to charity.
Our first major project has been around education reform with Startup: Education in Newark, NJ. I'm really proud of the work we've done there, helping leaders like Governor Chris Christie and Mayor Cory Booker sign the most progressive teachers contract in our country, opening four new district high schools, 11 new charter schools and more.
Today, in order to lay the foundation for new projects, we've made a contribution of 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Together, we will look for areas in education and health to focus on next. I'm hopeful we'll be able to have as positive an impact in our next set of projects.

Facebook Via HotHardware.

A statement from Samsung on their Exynos vulnerability.

   Over the weekend we learnt of and reported the vulnerability which affects Samsung's Exynos processors inside the Galaxy S2 and S3, the Galaxy Note 1 and 2 and every other device which is powered by Samsung's Exynos processors.

   Samsung France issued a statement French publication Le Monde and a separate one to Android Central. The statements reassured users that they are working on a "very quick" roll out of an update and they reiterated that the vulnerability is only an issue if "a malicious application is installed". If these applications are still very rare, but there are a lot of Android devices so someone somewhere will be affected. The full statement to Android Central read:

"Samsung is aware of the potential security issue related to the Exynos processor and plans to provide a software update to address it as quickly as possible.
The issue may arise only when a malicious application is operated on the affected devices; however, this does not affect most devices operating credible and authenticated applications.
Samsung will continue to closely monitor the situation until the software fix has been made available to all affected mobile devices."

   This is not perhaps a big of an issue as some people are making out, but it does have to potential to be problematic. Remember just to be vigilant when you're installing apps and only use trusted vendors in the Play Store!

   We'll let you know if we hear any more!
LeMonde Via Engadget and AndroidCentral.

In other news:

• Ofcom has released their 7th quarterly report on the amount of complaints each service provider in their respective industries received compared to their competitors! You can see our full write up here!

• Sprint has agreed a $120million break up fee if their deal with ClearWire doesn't go through for what ever reason, and there's a good few reasons why it won't! The way Sprint are looking at it is that the potential gains from this deal out weight the risk of losing that much money from the deal.
  Via DroidDog.

• Google Play Books received a nice little update today which added in support for 'reading aloud', different zooming options and some note making features. The 'read aloud' feature is not quite as polished as Audible for Amazon's books, but it'll only get better with time and it is a good start! Do you use Google's book solution over Amazon's Kindle app? Let us know in the comments below!
  Via Slashgear.

• A consortium of 12 companies including Apple, Research In Motion, Google, Samsung, Adobe, HTC, Facebook, Fujifilm, Huawei, Amazon, Shutterfly and Microsoft has teamed up and bought the digital-imaging patent portfolio as well as some other Kodak patents today. The acquisition set them back a total of $525 million which they'll split 12 ways!
  Via TechCrunch.

• Vodafone UK has announced that the Nokia Lumia 920 will be available on their network at some point early next year! You can check out their full blog post here for more information!
  

  BLOG: It's official - the Nokia Lumia 920 is going to be available to Vodafone customers in the New Year! vdfn.co/rbehe #wp8
  — Vodafone UK (@VodafoneUK) December 19, 2012

  Via Twitter (Tweet embedded above).

• Nintendo's head honcho, Satoru Iwata, has said that the Wii U will receive another software update at some point this month which will help to improve the frustratingly slow software loading times on the new console! We'll let you know when the update hits!
  Via Engadget.

And finally, today a leaked picture of the Acer V360 has been leaked by one of Mr Blurrycam's best photo shoots to date! The device seems to be a mixture of the Nexus 4 and the HTC Sensation XE; with buttons which are part of the screen and the red speaker grills which remind us very much of the Sensation XE.  The red in this phone is symbolic of Acer's partnership with DTS on this phone, as you can see the DTS logo is stamped on the back of the phone above some interesting design circles which may well protect the camera when the phone it put on a desk!

   Other than that the rumours specs are said to include a dual-core processor, a qHD (960x540p) 4.5" screen, a 5MP rear-facing camera and a micro-SD card slot. This will all be running on Android 4.1.1 to begin with, although we're not sure there will be too many updates forthcoming for this one! The main selling point of the phone is obviously the sound partnership with DTS so we expect some beefy speakers and perhaps to EQ tweaks included in the phone too! The device itself is tipped to be released in Q1 next year! We'll have to wait and see how much this thing will be when it comes to market!
Via Slashgear.

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11/09/2012

Everything Everywhere's 4G future.

   Yesterday evening we speculated what would be coming from today's Everything Everywhere event. Turns out we weren't too far off the mark; we were slightly wrong about the speed of the roll out (they'll have 98% coverage by 2014 and 40% coverage by this Christmas) and we didn't hear anything about a 4G iPhone, but then again that'd steal Apple's thunder.

   But, what we did learn today is that EE, which is Everything Everywhere's new name (and will be appearing on your Orange/T-Mobile handset very soon), will have a pretty stellar line up of mifi's and phones to take the brunt of your high speed internet abuse!

   From the picture below you may be able to pick out, from left to right, a little Huawei mifi, the Huawei Ascend P1 LTE, the HTC One XL, the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE, Nokia Lumia 920 and the 820 too! (both of which are EE exclusives) and a nice little dongle too!

   At the moment we don't know whether or not we'll be seeing an iPhone 5, but tomorrow will reveal all!

   Aside from that EE has promised to light up 40% of the country before Christmas with Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Sheffield and Southampton being the first spots to get the fast mobile internet!

   On a slightly unrelated note, the company also said they will start offering fibre optic broadband to customers, but we don't have any information on when this will be happening! Ohhh and so you now EE is cleverly calling their new network 4GEE... See what they did there!!! Yeah, I wasn't impressed either!

In other news:

• Analysts are predicted Apple will be able to ship 10 million of their new iPhone's to willing buyers before the end of September! Remember the announcement is tomorrow!!!

• If you're a GiffGaff customer then you may well want to read this! The company is having to reconsider it's £10 giftbag because they can't offer unlimited data for that price any more. So today is the start of a consultation period which ends on the 20th of September and there are 3 possible outcomes, so before you see them make sure you head over to their site to voice your opinion! Your choices are;

• Increase the price of the current £10 Goodybag to £13

• Keep the £10 Goodybag but limit data to 750mb

• Offer a £10 Goodybag with 750mb or a £13 Goodybag with unlimited data

• Apparently GoDaddy was taken offline by Anonymous last night!

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