Posts Tagged ‘Nokia’
The world’s biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia, has filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming the iPad 3G and iPhone infringe five of its patents.
Nokia claims the infringements involve technology used to enhance speech and data transmission and antenna innovations for compact devices.
This is the latest salvo in a long-running legal battle between the two companies.
Nokia and Apple are embroiled in another dispute concerning the iPhone.
“We’ve taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation,” said Paul Melin, general manager of patent licensing at Nokia.
In a statement, the company said that during the past two decades Nokia has invested about $51bn (£34bn) in research and development and has rounded up 11,000 patents.
Last year Nokia filed a similar lawsuit which claimed that various Apple products infringed Nokia patents. Apple responded with a countersuit against Nokia for infringing Apple patents with its smartphones.
Meanwhile, Apple is also involved in another legal row with Taiwan’s HTC, maker of Google’s Nexus One phone, which it says has infringed patented technology.
Patent disputes are common in the technology industry and often end with some kind of licensing agreement, correspondents say.
The Nokia lawsuit came on the day Apple announced that its iPad tablet computer will go on sale in nine countries outside the US on 28 May.
Finally, the company acknowledges the much-talked-about handset
Nokia has finally accepted and acknowledged the existence of its next generation Symbian smartphone – the N8. The phone has had its specifications leaked just a day ago and it seems, Nokia has had enough. The company has announced the phone officially. The N8 has been in the news lately and it was just yesterday that the first reviews of the handset surfaced. Just a few hours later, a document detailing the phones spec sheet was revealed.
Unlike the last Symbian based flagship, the N97, the N8 runs the latest version of the Symbian OS – Symbian ^3. While they share quite a few visual cues, S60 Version5 and Symbian^3 are two different operating systems. Symbian^3 supports multitouch (although as of now we’re unsure if it has been used effectively on the N8), flick scrolling and pinch-zoom. The Nokia N8 also offers multiple, personalizable homescreens which can be loaded with apps and widgets. The new 2D and 3D graphics architecture in the platform takes full advantage of the Nokia N8′s hardware acceleration to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface. Symbian^3 also raises the bar in performance by delivering greater memory management allowing more applications to run in parallel for a faster multi-tasking experience. It remains to be seen how much of an actual enhancement does Symbian^3 bring to the end user experience.
The N8 is fully social networking ready. Users can update their status, share location and photos, and view live feeds from Facebook and Twitter in a single app directly on the home screen. Calendar events from social networks can also be transferred to the device calendar.
The phone has a 3.5-inch capacitive screen with a 360×640 resolution. While the resolution might not be very high compared to Android based devices, the AMOLED display will make it look quite impressive. The device in its prototype avatar had a non standard sized HDMI port, we seriously hope this has been rectified in the final version. Even with all these features, the phone manges to stay quite slim at just 12.9 mm thin!
The N8 will be available in select markets during the third quarter of 2010. It is estimated to be priced at around the EUR 370 (Rs. 22,000) mark. This is the price minus taxes or subsidies. Also, it would be outright foolish to expect this phone to be priced below the 25k mark in India – so don’t get your hopes too high.
[source:techtree]
Pros
Superb camera
Excellent browsing experience
Cons
No MMS support
Interface can be tricky to navigate
Bottom Line
The Nokia N900 is ideal for techies who want a lot of customization and power; anyone looking for apps and aesthetics may want to go with a more mainstream smartphone.
Nokia N900: Powerful, but Missing Some Key Features
Nokia fans disappointed by last summer’s N97 smartphone, get excited: The Nokia N900 ($570, unlocked; price as of December 18, 2009) delivers on its promises of fast performance and excellent Web browsing. It also offers solid multimedia features, as well as one of the best cameras I’ve used on a smartphone. But the N900 isn’t for everyone: Some people might find the Linux-based Maemo(MAY-mo) platform confusing and not as user-friendly as other platforms. The handset is also missing some crucial features, such as app-store support and MMS messaging, as well as full Exchange support.
The Nokia N85’s terrific multimedia features make up for its lack of a touchscreen or physical keyboard.
The Nokia N85 ($370 unlocked, as of 4/7/2009) is very similar to the company’s N96, but with one big difference: It has an OLED display, and a gorgeous one–a huge boon because the N85 has excellent multimedia and camera features. But like the N95, the N85 lacks a touch screen or QWERTY keyboard, so navigation and messaging can be a pain.
Slightly smaller and lighter than the N96, the N85 measures 4 by 0.6 by 2 inches and weighs 4.5 ounces. Unfortunately, the unit’s plastic chassis feels a bit cheap and flimsy, which is something I’ve noticed with other N-Series phones. The display size on the N85 is also slightly smaller, down to 2.6 inches (versus 2.8 inches on the N96).
The N85 nevertheless felt comfortable in my hand. Additionally, it had very good call quality when used over AT&T’s 3G network. Voices sounded clear, with no static or hiss. The majority of people on the other end reported hearing sufficiently loud voices with very little background noise.
Like other N-Series phones, the N85 has a dual-slider design: Sliding the OLED screen up reveals a numeric keypad, while sliding it down switches the display and button orientation to horizontal and uncovers four multimedia-playback buttons (for Play/Pause, Forward, Back, and Stop).
First and foremost, N-Series phones are entertainment phones–and the N85 is no exception: It’s chock-full of great multimedia features. The Video Center contains all of your video content, including your personal videos, Internet videos, and video podcasts. The N85 supports a respectable number of video formats: MPEG-4 Part 2 (H.263/SP), MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264/AVC), WMV9, and RealVideo with playback at 30 frames per second. Video playback quality on the N85′s display was excellent. My only complaint: The screen was sometimes difficult to see in bright environments.
The music player is equally impressive, supporting MP3, WMA9, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+ formats. You can create playlists on-the-go, view album art on the now-playing screen, and browse songs by artist, album, genre, or composer. The N85 also has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, which isn’t exactly a bonus feature, but a lot of smart phones (HTC handsets, for example) lack one. Audio quality was very good; based on my experience, I could easily see myself using the N85 as my primary music device.
As an added bonus, the N85 also has an FM radio with a built-in FM transmitter. The transmitter is particularly handy in a car, since you can use it to wirelessly stream your music to any radio. Additionally, the N85 comes preloaded with Nokia’s Internet Radio app, which allows you to listen to various Internet radio stations.
One of the biggest draws of the N96 was its generous 16GB of internal flash memory. The N85, however, is at the opposite end of the storage spectrum, with only 78MB of internal memory. Luckily, Nokia makes up for this by including in the box an 8GB microSD card (the maximum amount of expandable memory the N85 supports)–not bad.
The N85 runs S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2, of the Symbian operating system. The user interface is attractive and easy to navigate. Running multiple applications slowed the N85′s performance, but overall I found the software speedy enough.
The handset comes preloaded with a variety of applications, including the excellent Nokia Maps 2.0 (with stand-alone and assisted GPS), QuickOffice (where you can view your Microsoft Office documents), Adobe Reader, and a .zip-file manager. For e-mail, the N85 supports POP3, SMTP, and POP3 accounts, as well as MMS and SMS messaging.
The N85′s 5-megapixel camera improves upon the N96′s with the welcome inclusion of a durable lens cover. The Carl Zeiss lens and dual-LED flash are on the back surface. The N96 has a variety of advanced features, such as a 20X digital zoom, an on-camera photo editor, seven shooting modes, red-eye reduction, five color tone settings, and options for brightness, white balance, ISO light sensitivity, color tone, and contrast adjustment. You can also shoot VGA video at 30 frames per second. In my hands-on tests, I took pictures in settings, including a darkly lit room, the rainy outdoors, and a brightly lit office. The Nokia N96′s image quality impressed me: Colors appeared accurate, and the images were sharp in most of the environments I tried it in.
As with the N96, I was disappointed with how difficult it was to navigate through content and messages. The N85 lacks a touchscreen and a hardware QWERTY keyboard, so navigation depends on a five-way navigational pad and softkeys. Since the Nokia N97, which will have both a touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard, is waiting on the horizon (it is due sometime this year), the N85 might already seem a bit obsolete. But Nokia has yet to announce U.S. pricing for the N97, and if the N96′s debut price is any indication, you can bet that it will be sky high.
Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic comes with bundled software that makes downloading songs a breeze
BUILT-IN music players in mobile devices are now almost as commonplace as cameras.
It isn’t that surprising, then, that mobile phone giant Nokia now has its own digital music service, Comes With Music.
The service, which comes bundled with purchase of certain Nokia phones, allows users to download music tracks with a mobile phone or computer.
The service’s interface is easy enough to use, and requires the user to log in with a username and password each time they use the service.
This is a good safety measure to ensure that only the account owner is able to use the service, in the event of the device being stolen.
Downloading songs on the PC is a breeze – simply pick a song and select ‘download’. Users don’t have to wait for files to finish downloading before browsing and listening to other song previews.
It’s also easy to search for songs by title, artiste or album name.
The service’s extensive library is comprehensive and a joy to use.
It even turned up obscure and older tracks by some of my favourite musicians.
It is also up-to-date with the latest releases across all genres – I downloaded Kelly Clarkson’s entire new album with a few clicks of the mouse on my laptop.
The user-friendliness of the service – both on the mobile device and the laptop – is a big draw.
However, the downside is that unlike with a laptop, downloading full albums with a phone is impossible.
Each track must be selected individually for download.
When new tracks are moved to the phone, users must first refresh the listings to see and play their new tracks.
For the first 12 months, subscribers to the service can download as many songs as they want for free. They can also keep these songs after the service term expires.
Nokia did not state how much the downloads would cost after the year was up.
Nokia’s new 5800 XpressMusic, which comes bundled with the Comes With Music service, is a breeze to use.
It has a generous 3.2-inch touch screen, comparable to the iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen.
Pretty
It is easy on the eye, with sleek, rounded edges and is relatively compact, as far as touch-screen phones go.
The built-in music player is simple to use, with a user-friendly interface which supports album art.
Users can vary the sound balance, enhance the bass, and select one of five equaliser settings. There is also an FM radio.
Sound quality via the external speakers was crisp, but was better with the bundled headset.
The 3.2-megapixel digital camera shoots decent pictures and videos – pictures were clear, with little noise and colour distortion.
Basic functions like calling and text messaging are a breeze, and call quality was predictably good.
The 5800 XpressMusic comes with a decent 81MB of internal memory, but this can be expanded to 8GB with an external SD card.
Multimedia junkies will find its extensive features a treat to use, and music lovers especially will find it a worthy alternative to the iPhone.
It retails for $798 without a plan.