Apple is one step ahead of all Windows Mobile sales in Q3



Well, it's official - Q3 2008 saw Apple's only current smartphone, the iPhone 3G, outsell the numerous devices based on the Windows Mobile platform not only in USA but on worldwide scale. That's some surprising news, we bet Mr. Jobs is already throwing in a dinner party.

Despite the global financial crisis the smartphone market share is still growing (though at a slower pace than last year) and territories are being remapped. The third quarter of 2008 saw some really interesting changes in position.

Nokia is still king of the hill with 42.4% market share in Q3, but for the first time they have a decline in sales as compared to last year.

Windows Mobile has shamefully slipped behind Apple proving that sometimes it's not all about pumped up specs, but user experience and service integration count big time as well.

RIM's Blackberry devices are also growing in popularity having 81.7% more sales than last year's quarter. And they should do even better in Q4. Seems like the Bold and the Storm just might liven up the conservative facade of the brand.

Different OSes are changing market shares too. For the first time Symbian has fallen bellow 50% market share possibly because of the rise in popularity of touch-screen devices, which effectively lacked in the Nokia portfolio in Q3. Sony Ericsson's UIQ wasn't there to fill the gap either.

The now elederly WinMo will probably continue to suffer hard hits from the competition due to its inferior user-friendliness. The OS definitely needs a serious refresh and we really hope to see one soon.

But user-friendliness is only part of the game. The successful future of the smartphone platforms will also depend on building up better application portfolios, wider online services with easier and more intuitive access. AppStore or no AppStore, Apple's application business model is one fine example of delivering the right content straight to the device hassle-free.

izvor

Mysterious T-swivel handset appears on Korean site, keeps us guessing



Here's a Sunday challenge for you -- what in tarnation is this thing? The mysterious T-swivel type handset has appeared on a Korean site, presumably signifying its status as a simple concept. Obviously, the device packs a full QWERTY keyboard, a front-mounted camera, a rather sizable display and a swivel contraption to keep things horizontal when texting and the like. Beyond that, your guess is as good as ours here. Any clues on this thing's origins? We only ask because, you know, we'd love to actually toy around with one.

izvor

Vertu Boucheron 150 - beautiful or just crippled?

Luxury mobile phones have always had controversial designs, and this is also the case with Vertu’s latest masterpiece: the Vertu Boucheron 150.

Created to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Boucheron French jewelry house, the handset does look like a Vertu, but a crippled and weird one. And if it’s beautiful or not, it’s up for you to decide.

Apparently, the phone is built out of a single piece of massive gold. Its creation is said to take more than 2.000 hours (since it’s hand made), which lead us to believe that there won’t be to many units of it around.

The handset comes in a luxury wooden case that looks like it’s made by a pirate for his treasure(s).





There are no details about the features of Vertu Boucheron 150, save for the existence of 3G connectivity.

The phone’s price was not announced, but it’s rumored to be of more than $30.000. 

izvor

 20 Reasons Why Nokia 5800 is better than Apple Iphone

1) Size
The iphone is bigger in size and uneasy for one hand grip. Nokia 5800 is designed to fit well into your hands. Being smaller in width, its easy to operate single handedly.

Iphone size: 115.5 X 62.1 X 12.3 mm
Nokia 5800 size: 111 X 51.7 X 15.5 mm

2) Weight
Iphone is much bulkier than Nokia 5800. Nokia 5800 is 25g lighter than Iphone in weight.

Iphone: 133g
Nokia 5800: 109g

3) Screen Resolution
The Iphone has 3.5” screen while Nokia 5800 has 3.2” but the resolution of 5800 is far more superior to Iphone.

Resolution:
Iphone: 480 by 320
Nokia 5800: 640 by 360

4) Storage
Iphone comes with two options- 8GB & 16GB internal memory. Nokia has a more flexible option to offer 8GB with micro SD card which is expandable upto 16GB. Nokia owners can expand memory size according to needs which the Iphone guys can’t do.

5) Input Methods
Iphone: Finger only.
Nokia 5800: Finger, stylus, plectrum, handwriting recognition.

6) Features
Apple Iphone has lots of missing features like cut and paste function, saving email attachments, no support for third party headphones, ringtones, applications, many software bugs and other technical glitches. Nokia 5800 Tube has no such issues plus many more amazing features included.

7) Colors
Iphone: Black for 8 & 16 GB, White for 16 GB only.
Nokia 5800: Red, Blue and Black.

8 ) Battery
Nokia 5800 provides upto 35 hrs of music playing time against Apple Iphone which claims just 24 hrs. Overall battery power (talktime/standby) is also about 30% more in Nokia 5800. What more, 5800 has a removable battery which Iphone lacks.

Iphone: 5 hrs talk-time, 300 hrs standby, not removable.
Nokia 5800: 8.8 hrs talk-time, 406 hrs standby, removable battery.

9) Camera
Iphone: 2 MP, no flash, no zoom, no additional camera.
Nokia 5800: 3.2 MP, Flash, 3x digital zoom with Carl Zeiss lens. A second camera in front is available for video calling/conferencing.

10) Video Calling
Iphone: No Video calling possible in Iphone.
Nokia 5800: Video calling is possible.

11) Video Recording
IPhone: No option for video recording.
Nokia 5800: Video recording is included.

12) Music Service
Iphone: Paid service with Apple Itunes Store. You pay and download music to your Iphone.
Nokia 5800: “Comes with music” service is bundled with Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic phone by which you can download as much music as you want for 1 year- FREE!!

13) Voice Dialing
Iphone: Not Available
Nokia 5800: Available

14) Voice Recording
IPhone: Not Available
Nokia 5800: Available

15) Web Browser
Iphone: Webkit based Safari browser, no flash available.
Nokia 5800: Webkit based browser, supports flash lite.

16) FM Radio
Iphone: Not Available
Nokia 5800: Available

17) Bluetooth
Iphone: Bluetooth is available for just handsfree, no file sharing possible.
Nokia 5800: Bluetooth available for handsfree and file sharing is possible. Better audio quality on bluetooth in 5800 with A2DP technology which Iphone lacks.

18) Messaging
Iphone: It does not support message forwarding, multiple SMS deletion, sending SMS to multiple recipients and multimedia messages (MMS).
Nokia 5800: All the above is possible plus it has MMS ver 1.3, message size upto 600kb, and automatic resizing of Images for MMS.

19) Price
Nokia 5800 is hopefully unlocked (without any contract) and will sell much cheaper for just £219 in UK which is equal to 279 Euros or $385.

Apple iPhone 3G, on the other hand, with contract in US comes for $199 & $299 for 8 & 16 GB models and the plans with AT&T are way too expensive. Unlocked Apple Iphones sells for around $800 on Ebay.

In other parts of the world, the 8GB unsubsidized Iphone model costs 499 euros ($700) in Italy, 350 pounds ($620) in UK, $700 in India. Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic is expected to sell around the world for about $400 or below.

20) Experience
Nokia: Ages of experience, hundreds of success stories and dozens of smart handsets in current portfolio. Nokia has about 40% market share with the No.1 spot with no close competitors. Certainly the king when it comes to brand value, service and experience.

Apple: First phone ever launched by Apple is Iphone, no prior experience in the telecom market. It’s a novice in the market with a very less market share despite having millions of Iphone sold.

Verdict:
Almost all the major brands around the world like Samsung, HTC, LG, etc launched their touchscreen smartphones with a hope to beat Apple’s Iphone. No-one came close to Iphone when it comes to looks, style, feel and features.

This is the first time a tech giant like Nokia has hit it hard with its first true touchscreen smartphone. Nokia 5800 is a real Iphone killer with way ahead features, perfect looks and great price. Bravo Nokia, Well Done!!

izvor

Head to head: Nokia N96 : HTC Touch HD : Apple iPhone 3G

Everybody loves a good head-to-head, especially when there's some hands-on insight involved and not just a spec fight....



The battle for top end phone supremacy at Christmas 2009? Here are certainly three of the main contenders:






Picking an overall winner is pretty pointless, tempted though I am, since each device plays to a different target market. The Touch HD will appeal to anyone already committed to Microsoft solutions or with an existing Windows Mobile application portfolio, e.g. within enterprises. The iPhone 3G will appeal to anyone looking for heavy media consumption and gaming - and it's relatively cheap, SIM-free, especially considering the all-in data bundle. But the Nokia N96 is perhaps the best of the three featured, for 'all round' use, with almost no weaknesses. Your comments welcome!

izvor

Fennec For Symbian Kicked Off Today!
Mozilla Just Released The Symbian S60 Project!



Two months ago, Mozilla, the nonprofit organization behind Firefox, has rolled out an "alpha" version of Fennec, the long awaited mobile version of the Firefox their very popular desktop browser but without word about support for other mobile platforms.

This early release is only available for Nokia’s Linux based Maemo platform and it basically lets programmers play with the interface, catch bugs, and write add-on features as well.

At the moment Mozilla is focused on the Linux and Windows Mobile devices but it seems that they finally realized the power of the worlds leading mobile platform and they just kicked off an official project which should result with porting the Mobile version of the Firefox browser to Symbian S60 devices!!!

Here is the quoted info from Christian Sejersen's blog about the project that should get the development kick-started and invite everybody who is interested in seeing Fennec (Mobile Firefox) on Symbian to get involved!

    Today we (Mozilla) are focusing our efforts in mobile on Linux and Windows Mobile devices. In Q3 2008 Symbian had 49.8% of the total smartphone sales (and 57% in Q2) according to Gartner compared to 11.1% for Windows Mobile and 7.2% for Linux. There are a few other platforms: iPhone, RIM and Android that have or are gaining market share, where we for technical or licensing reasons can’t be deployed.

    So in order for Mozilla to be relevant in the smartphone space we need to have a presence on the Symbian platform. We have worked with Symbian to understand and scope the size of the project and Symbian are supporting this with engineers to start working on this project so far. At the same time, several Symbian houses are interested in contributing work.



The current high-level plan (that we will revise as we move forward) is split into 5 phases:

   1. Fennec compiling and linking Planned completion date:
      end of January
   2. Basic/limited browsing possible Planned completion date:
      end of February
   3. Full browsing Planned completion date:
      end of April
   4. Fennec ready for initial testing Planned completion date:
      TBD
   5. Bug fixing and productisation of Fennec Planned completion date: TBD



izvor

Motorola AURA Now Available

For those with a few grand kicking around, Motorola’s latest foray into luxury handsets, the Motorola AURA, is now available for $1,999.99. What makes this thing so freakin’ expensive?

    * World’s first 16 million color, circular display with 300 dpi resolution
    * Scratch-resistant 62 carat lens
    * Stainless steel housing with chemically etched textures and patterns
    * Swiss-made main bearing, which serves as the foundation allowing the blade to rotate with seamless precision
    * Custom-engineered rotating mechanism which has 130 precision ball bearings that drive the assisted-opening blade
    * Gears composed of Rockwell 50-55 hardened steel, protected with the same coating used in high-performance racing engines
    * In total, 700+ individual components comprised of features including up-scaled, nickel-chrome-plated exposed screws
    * Mirror polish finish with PVD coating, the same used when making luxury watches
    * Aluminum keypad

For some, the design might be a little too tongue-in-cheek, but personally, I think the layout is very distinctive, and the circular screen is a very nice twist on traditional cell phones. Technically it’s nothing fancy - unlocked, quad-band EDGE, 2 megapixel camera and 2 GB of internal memory, but for the fashion-conscious, this seems like a viable alternative to Vertu.



izvor

 2000

MultiTouch Screen Using Nokia N95!



Well, as I have already said numerous times, Sittiphol is genius mind, there is no doubt, and believe me I am not telling that because he is my friend but because he is great developer and innovator!

If you are for a long enough that you are well aware of his interesting "NeuScreen" project that just got an update and has enveloped into something better and is now one step closer to hit the end users, at least I hope.

"NeuScreen" is the MultiTouch Screen Engine using real time image processing on Nokia N95 and same us NeuTuch doesn’t requires any additional equipment beside the IR gloves!

Anyway, here the video demo of the latest version of this project, NeuScreen v3. Old features have been improved and new cool features have been added. No more IR pens in this version because it has been improved to IR gloves which is much more practical for real use.





Sittiphol is one of those people who change the way we use technology. He is young but very talented developer from Bangkok in Thailand, and is most known for his amazing MobiTubia YouTube client and flv video player application, which won him first place in the Nokia Open C Challenge last year and also made him the nokia forum champion too.

He is also brain behind the MosKillTo game and its innovative accelerometer controlled 3D engine as well as two pretty simple but yet useful and well known applications called NeoReboot and Theme Launcher.



izvor

Comes With Music servis kompanije Nokia je razbijen. Time je omogućeno puštanje pesama nabavljenih preko ovog servisa na bilo kom uređaju. Pomenuti servis dozvoljava korisniku koji kupi specijalnu verziju mobilnog telefona (po pravilu skuplju) da skine neograničen broj pesama tokom jedne godine, potpuno besplatno. Međutim, pesme koje se skinu preko Comes With Music servisa se mogu puštati samo u odgovarajućem telefonu, odnosno korisnikovom PC računaru, usled implementirane DRM zaštite. Sada je ta zaštita razbijena i korisnici mogu reprodukovati pesme u bilo kom uređaju koji podržava MP3 reprodukciju. Takođe, treba reći da korisnici mogu da po isteku jedne godine zadrže sve pesme koje su skinuli. Razbijanje se vrši pomoću softverske aplikacije Tunebite, koja se plaća 20 evra. Drugim rečima, pomoću nje je moguće beskonačno koristiti skinute pesme. Nokia za sada nije reagovala.

Izvor