Nokia has made a huge impact with its design of the Lumia 800 Windows Phone, drawing glances of lust and envy from every quarter. With Windows Phone inside, it has a strong and stable OS platform to build on. There's more to making the Lumia range stand out than smart hardware design, and one of those areas is software. Nokia Music is one of the key differentiators in the software line up - with today's update to the software, Nokia Music is ready for its UK retail release tomorrow. Let's take a closer look.
If you’ve ever worked on video editing, you’ll understand how stitching together clips of the same event from multiple devices can be a tedious and labour intensive task. Nokia's researchers are working on a way to automate this, and were showing off their work at Nokia World 2011. The result of their work “Director’s Cut” is a system that can intelligently cut clips together. Read on to find out more.
What to make of the Nokia Lumia 800 after more than a week? How about this... when Stephen Elop proclaimed on stage this was "the first real Windows Phone", it felt a little presumptuous. After using it on last week's transatlantic trip to Los Angeles, working the connected aspects on the trade show floor of BlogWorld, and relying on it for the entertainment side of things in Cattle Class on the Boeing 777, I'm beginning to agree with him.
Nokia’s Cambridge Research Lab is investigating several uses for Carbon nanotube technology. Built from a single layer of Graphene, a new type of Hydrophobic coating could make phones much more resilient to wet environments, while providing a cheaper alternative to current touch screen technology, which is based on rare earth metals. Since Graphene is a form of Carbon, one of the most abundant elements on the planet, the raw materials are much easier to obtain. We spoke to researchers at Nokia World’s Future Technology tent to find out more.
The Nokia Kinetic was the bendy concept phone that garnered the most column inches from Nokia World’s Future Tent, at this year’s event in London. While several sites have written about the design and usage scenarios, few have commented on Nokia’s Carbon nanotube research that made it possible. It certainly looks like it’s a long way off, as the reliability of flexible components are still questionable, as hinted at by the Kinetic’s umbilical cable. Read on for the full story.
Microsoft's Brandon Watson, Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 development, and Nokia's Reggie Hutcherson, Director of Windows Phone Experience, held a talk at Nokia World 2011 about the opportunities on offer to Windows Phone app developers. The talk was aimed to show that they understood the needs of developers, and how serious both companies are about obtaining and supporting as many developers as possible. While this is what you might expect both companies to say, Brandon Watson in particular putting himself forward as being available, anytime, to any serious developers that wanted to talk to him.
Marko Ahtisaari, Senior Vice President of Design at Nokia, and Albert Shum, General Manager of the Windows Phone Design Studio, held a panel at Nokia World 2011. They explained how the design teams from both companies worked together to bring the Lumia 800 to fruition. Each designer talked about the way in which their teams had designed their products, and how well the design values of the two companies matched. Whether you're into design or not, it was an interesting insight into how both software and hardware designers form and refine their ideas.
You never launch a website "cold" so it should be no surprise that the All About team have been carrying a number of Windows Phones for many months before we went public with All About Windows Phone last week. Thanks to the assistance of the Microsoft UK Developer team, I've been carrying the HTC Trophy 7 since May, and it's time to talk about the experience of Windows Phone after almost six months in the field.
Metro UI is the freshest user interface design we've seen in many years - Joe Belfiore is Microsoft's vice president of the Windows Phone programme and he spoke in a small 'speaker's corner' setting at Nokia World 2011, explaining the origins and motivations behind Metro. Read on for the details and some of our impressions, including clues as to where the name itself came from...
I blame Apple. Although it didn't invent the 'app store' (that was Nokia, back in 2006), Apple was the company that really popularised the idea, to the point where something doesn't really 'exist' now unless there's 'an app for that'. Which is totally unfair, since many Internet-centric functions work just as well using what the web site throws at your smartphone. Here's a case in point: watching YouTube on your Windows Phone smartphone.
