Whilst at MWC, Windows Phone Central had the chance to sit down with Marco Argenti, Senior Vice President of the Developer and Marketplace division at Nokia. We had just been checking out the new partner apps being shown off in Nokia’s sizeable booth and were keen to hear more about the relationships Nokia are continuing to build with developers both commercial and indie, especially following the news of Nokia’s new imaging and HERE API features.
You can find the full write up of that discussion after the break.
By JayTBennett, Wednesday, Feb 27, 2013 at 11:12 am
Ready for something cool? One of our favourite booths here at MWC has been the Qi wireless charging booth, it’s small in comparison to some companies but it’s showing off a few devices that sort of define the term ‘gadget lust’. With Nokia announcing two new Lumia devices on Monday that both have wireless charging capability, the vision of “wireless charging everywhere” is becoming ever closer.
You’ll find a full titillating gallery after the break, and we’re also going to call out a few of the devices specifically that piqued our interest. That first image up top though you might recognise, it’s the Tylt Vu which we covered just over a month ago when it was up for pre-order. Coming in several striking colours (although we only saw this yellow one), this charger would not look out of place in Nokia’s accessory line up.
Digital photo postcards, the mobile revolution has been trying to use them to replace the traditional, and far slower postal equivalent for some time now, and our final Nokia app from MWC this year is a beta preview of their Place Tag service.
We can’t guarantee that what we saw is the final feature set, but this looks like another Nokia lens intended to extend your camera functionality rather than being a fully featured app, read on to find out how it all works.
During yesterday’s press conference Nokia started to show off the advertising campaigns it will be running for the Lumia 720, and we caught a brief glimpse of their new app “Glam Me”. It’s a very simple lens which is designed to aid self-portraiture using your front facing camera.
You start by taking a picture of your smiling face having framed it live using the camera. Not forgetting to show some teeth as the app will make use of those choppers later. Using Nokia’s image processing APIs, some auto-correct magic is immediately applied to enhance skin tones and soften focus, and you’re left with a corrected image.
Bringing our coverage of Nokia's partner apps that were demoed today towards a close, we have a somewhat intriguing use of the Windows Phone lens feature: JobLens.
Positioned as a service to help those looking for work, JobLens provides a friends list to help you network and look for opportunities through your contacts, but that’s not the clever feature. As suggested by the title, this app uses augmented reality to show you jobs that are being advertised near your location.
Nokia seems to be fostering quite the partnership with Snowboard manufacturer Burton. We’ve seen Nokia sponsoring Burton riders, both partnering to create sleeping bags for your phone, and now there’s the Burton app for Windows Phone.
Released to the Windows Phone marketplace last week, many will have skipped over this app but we think it is worth your time, and here’s why.
Continuing our tour of MWC 2013, we’ve been checking out the Partner apps Nokia is showcasing within their booth (something of a home-from-home for the Windows Phone Central team today). This time we’re bringing you a hands on video with GoPro. Nokia have been working with the GoPro team to build a quality first party app for Windows Phone and it really shows with this app.
If we step back for a moment and answer the question, “what is Go Pro?” well the official website is probably better positioned to answer, but essentially what we’re looking at is a wearable camera suitable for capturing sporting moments from a first-person perspective for editing and sharing with the world. Nokia even had a demonstration unit alongside their demo Lumia device and it certainly looks designed to take a beating.
One of the cooler things we’ve seen here at Mobile World congress is this nifty Nokia X Burton snuggly case for your Lumia (truth be told, you can jam any phone in there).
First pillows for your phone and now a sleeping bag, you ask? What’s going on here? Well, this isn’t a gimmick as evidently putting your phone in the really, really cold (we’re talking below 0) is bad for the battery. Using this case when camping, snowboarding or ice fishing will prolong your battery up to 50% longer, which last we checked is a good idea.
This morning Nokia announced 4 new devices to their handset line-up, 2 Asha devices, and 2 Windows Phone devices.
Nokia’s sights did not seem set on the US market though, where the carriers heavily subsidize even higher end devices to bring them into consumer’s hands. Instead we saw indications that Nokia is continuing to drive into markets where upfront cost is everything. Stephen Elop was also clear that Nokia are pushing aggressively into the enterprise market, highlighting Windows Phone's integration with Microsoft Office services as well as the full device encryption available on every handset.
There’s no arguing against the fact that the two Asha phones, selling at less than the price of your average video game or dinner for two, will sell in their target markets. So we’ll focus on the Lumia 720 and the Lumia 520.
By Rich Edmonds, Saturday, Feb 23, 2013 at 4:34 pm
Nokia has announced that UK sports retailer Sports Direct has joined the line of companies moving across to Windows Phone 8 and will be adopting the Lumia 820. We appear to be banging a drum to a repetitious rhythm with these business success stories, but it's not often that we're able to shout out about big name companies joining the platform, and it's rare that Nokia has managed to bundle all its partnership deals into one month so far.
Nokia has announced that Lumia Windows Phones will be used by select sales teams at The Coca-Cola Company in Vietnam and Cambodia. The hardware will be utilised on a daily basis by sales associates in the market for order processing, equipment validation and market execution improvement. The reasons behind the switch are a familiar story.
Nokia announced a Lumia contest earlier this month, and now the company has unveiled the two selected winners. The competition saw Lumia owners take some interesting, strange or ingenious recordings using the Cinemagraph app to produce unique GIF images. Five humorous runner-ups were showcased in the blog post, but the two winning images are priceless.
Nokia flipped the switch in the U.S.. Market for the Nokia Music+ service today for all Nokia Lumia Windows Phones.
The subscription will run you $3.99 a month and offer premium features above and beyond what the Nokia Music app currently offers. Features that includes unlimited music downloads for offline use, unlimited skips, lyric streaming, and a boost in sound quality.
To subscribe to Nokia Music+ just enter your Nokia Music app, enter the settings menu and you should see an upgrade option where you can start your monthly subscription. Not sure if Nokia Music+ is your cup of tea? Nokia did things right by offering a seven day trial period for the service to let you try things out before signing on the dotted line. When you sign up for the trial, the expiration date will appear in your Nokia Music app's settings. After which you can convert your trial subscription to a paid subscription.
A recent YouGov survey shows 45 percent of Nokia mobile device owners would recommend the product to a friend and promote the hardware to others. The independent study illustrates an 18 percent climb compared to last year, as well as a 4 percent drop in those who would not recommend their Nokia mobile phone, down to 33 percent.
Hate to be the one that said “we told you so”, but we told you so. T-Mobile USA has confirmed what we previously reported – No Windows Phone 7.8 for the Nokia Lumia 710. And just like that, a hundred cries could be heard tonight.
Nokia is a company with history, there's no denying that. The company has led the way in mobile communication for years, but lost the ball for a while with the rise of the smartphone. Moving across to Windows Phone, Nokia is rejuvenating the brand and developing new technologies to regain its lead in the market it helped develop.
We're rather confused as to what's going on but it seems as though Sonic CD has joined Super Monkey in becoming unavailable on the Windows Phone store. Both titles were published in the Nokia Collection of apps for Lumia owners to enjoy for free, which was seen as an awesome move by Nokia. It's therefore come as a slight surprise that both games can no longer be downloaded.
Although “all will be revealed” at Mobile World Congress in just a few short weeks, it doesn’t mean the speculation cannot begin. A new device, RM-860, has shown up in two places to validate its existence.
The first spot is on Elbert Perez’s Occasional Gamer site. Perez makes numerous high quality Windows Phone games and he happens to record which devices use his wares. That info is then shared publicly on his website.
We’ve all been holding our breaths the past few months waiting for older devices running Windows Phone 7.5 to get the modest update to 7.8. Great news for those of you with a Nokia Lumia handset like the 710 or 900 – starting today, the Windows Phone 7.8 update is rolling out to all of you.
It’s been a long time coming, but your Nokia Lumia 510, 610, 710, 800, and 900 have been a little bummed out about missing the double wide Live Tile action newer phones have been getting. Not anymore, you can now look forward to multiple tile sizes, lockscreens, and more theme colors.
Last month we showed you a video to aid in taking apart the Nokia Lumia 920. The video was well done and a great tool for anyone wanting to get inside their device. Now we’ve got the official Service Manual from Nokia to help you in playing doctor with your 920.
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