Pocket Picks roundup: 29th October - Nokia returns, Sony Ericsson leaves, Dropbox jump on the bandwagon
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There’s a distinctly Windows Phone focus to this week’s roundup, mainly thanks to a certain ailing Finnish telecommunications company.
Firsthand reports from our boys on the show floor at Nokia World have been extremely positive, with the rumoured marriage of Nokia hardware and the slick LiveTiles nature of the Windows Phone OS fitting together snugly.
While everyone expects this new generation of phones to help Nokia out somewhat when it comes to high-end smartphone sales, it was a bit of a surprise to me that it decided to stage its keynote speech where the products were announced at 9am BST - a time where a certain part of the world Nokia has failed to crack in the past was sound asleep in bed.
Still, it made a pleasant change for us in the UK not to have to stay up until 3am.
Nokia unveils the Lumia 710 and 800 Windows Phone handsets
In what must have been one of the first Nokia World product launches that hasn’t subsequently left the tech press shaking their heads sadly, the Finnish giant finally took the wraps off the first two Windows Phone handsets - the Nokia Lumia 710 and 800.
The 800 is the big dog of the two, coming with a 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor, a Carl Zeiss lens camera, and incredibly sleek curves.
Yes, it’s essentially the N9 again in looks, but under its ripcage beats the heart of Mango - the latest version of the Windows Phone OS - as well as a few neat apps such as free radio stations, turn-by-turn navigation, and more that are unique to Nokia’s range of phones.
The 800 is expected to launch next month, with the 710 following in early 2012. And, no, we have no idea why they picked those numbers.
Windows Phone Apollo update coming mid-2012
If, like me, your network operator of choice only just got around to updating your Windows Phone to Mango (thanks, Orange), it may come as a bit of a surprise to find out that the next major update to the OS already has a release date pencilled in.
Codenamed Apollo, it's expected to introduce NFC support (something Android has just officially recieved with Ice Cream Sandwich), voice control (iPhone 4S owners should know about that), and a location-based framework for further integration into Nokia services.
No word on whether it’ll be regarded as a ‘major’ upgrade in the same way Mango was (and is - the battery saving feature doesn’t joke around), but we’ll no doubt discover more nearer the time.
Nokia demonstrates flexible screen tech at Nokia World
We’ve seen flexible screens from the likes of Samsung and Nokia demonstrated on video before, but now the latter company had prototypes for a hands-on mauling at this year’s Nokia World in London.
The screens can be twisted, pulled, stretched, and thrown at the cat (don’t throw things at the cat) and still survive. More than that - they can use the various motions as commands, like expanding an image by pushing the screen towards you.
It’s all pretty interesting stuff, but as with all these bendable screen technologies there’s no ‘firm’ date as to when we’ll start seeing it actually appearing in handsets.
I write my own puns.
Sony buys the rest of Ericsson for over €1 billion
After ten years of jointly owning Ericsson, Sony has stumped up the cash to buy out the remaining 50 per cent of shares, taking full control of one of the major players in the telecommunications and mobile business.
The intention, as laid out by Sony CEO Howard Stringer, is that it will “make the difference for consumers, who want to connect with content wherever they are, whenever they want”. Or, in other words, expect a lot more cross-communication between the TV, console, mobile, and other electronic devices coming out from Sony in the next few years.
Stringer describes the deal as allowing for a “four screen strategy”, which can sound a bit dodgy if you say the words quickly.
HTC offering 5GB of Dropbox storage for new customers
Well, would you look at that.
In last week’s Pocket Picks roundup I said that Dropbox would likely have to start offering a better deal to compete with some of the up and coming cloud-based storage services like Box.net and iCloud. Sure enough, it has.
The company has teamed up with HTC to offer 5GB of free storage to every new HTC customer. That’s not as much as box.net’s 50GBs, but significantly more than the usual 2GB you get with the standard free account for the service.
There’s no word yet as to whether this offer will also extend to existing HTC owners as well, but our guess is probably not (given that there are quite a few of you out there).
