The Nokia Lumia 720, which was announced by Nokia today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, takes a position in the very middle of the Windows Phone 8 Lumia line up, and is aimed at a 'young and design-savvy crowd with busy social lives'. There's special focus on imaging with a good main camera (6mp, f/1.9 aperture), a wide angle front facing camera, and lens apps, as Nokia seek to take "high end innovations to a new audiences". (Updated with original photos)
At Mobile World Congress 2013 Nokia is expected to make a number of device and service announcements at their press conference, which is taking place on Monday 25th February at 08:30 CET (07:30 GMT). We'll be updating this story with our on-the-scene live coverage at the event takes place. You can also watch a live stream of the press conference event here.
The first software update to Windows Phone 8, code named Portico, has now entered the third phase of its roll out. By the end of the month most Windows Phone 8 devices will have received a notification to apply the update. The update includes additional messaging functionality, the ability to send text replies in response to incoming calls, an option to switch off image loading in Internet Explorer, improvements to WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and a number of performance improvements and bug fixes.
The Nokia Music+ service is now available in the UK for all Nokia Lumia devices (both Windows Phone 7 and 8). The premium version of Nokia's music service allows for unlimited skips, unlimited downloads (of music 'Mixes'), higher quality streaming and downloads, lyrics support, and a web-app player that lets you use the service on any Internet-connected device (PC, Smart TV, tablet). A free 7 day trial is available for all users, with the full subscription costing £3.99 per month.
Nokia today announced the launch of Nokia Music+, a premium subscription service that offers an enhanced version of the existing Nokia Music service. Nokia Music+ will roll out, in select markets, in the next few weeks. The exact price will vary by market, but is expected to be around €3.99 ($5.37 / £3.40) per month.
In addition to the existing features of the free version of Nokia Music, the premium version of the service allows for unlimited skips, unlimited downloads (of music Mixes), higher quality streaming and downloads, lyrics support, and a web-app player that lets you use the service on any Internet connected device (PC, Smart TV, tablet).
Following on from a preliminary set of results, Nokia has now released its full interim Q4 2012 results, reporting an operating profit of €439 million (up from -€954 million in Q4 2011), with net sales of €8.041 billion (down 20% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's operating profit was €276 million. The margin in Devices and Services was 7.2% (up from from 3.4% in Q4 2011 and up from -19.2% in Q2 2012). Total smartphone device sales were 6.6 million (4.4 million Lumia, 2.2 million Symbian).
Starting today, as expected, Microsoft and Nokia are making the beta of Nokia Drive+ available for free to all Windows Phone 8 customers - (explaining the asterisk in the headline above) at least, in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Nokia Drive+ had previously been a Nokia exclusive title on its Lumia range, but the legalities and finances have presumably all been worked out to bring full turn by turn navigation to all Windows Phone 8 users, again presumably with a roll out around the rest of the world in due course.
Nokia today announced that its Q4 2012 results will be better than previously expected, with the key Devices & Services division's non-IFRS operating margin expected to be between break even and 2 percent. Previously the company had indicated this would be -6%, with a +/-4% range. Nokia also currently estimates that it sold 6.6 million smartphones (4.4 million Lumia, 2.2 million Symbian) in the last quarter. Mobile phone sales were 86.3 million, and, of these, 9.3 million were Asha full touch devices, which are sometimes classified as smartphones (in which case, a total of 15.9 million smartphones).
Nokia has announced the start of the roll out of a software updates for the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 in Canada (Rogers) and the US (AT&T). The update (PR 1.1) combines the Windows Phone 10211 platform update with a number of firmware updates specific to Nokia. The platform update includes enhancements to Messaging, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and a number of performance improvements. The firmware updates includes enhancement to imaging performance and battery management.
A new version of the Nokia Music app is available for Lumia devices running on Windows Phone 7.5 or Windows Phone 8. The new version includes a number of UI tweaks that help streamline the Nokia Music user experience. The latest update follows in the footsteps of a recent update that added support for rich artist information (swipe left from player screen), saving of artist images, and improved language support.
