Nokia to support China Mobile, taming Lumia 920 with TD-SCDMA

Now that is some news about Nokia, as China Mobile -- the world's largest carrier -- has agreed to bring the Lumia 920 into its fold. A representative for Nokia revealed the news late this week, although just like every other handset with Windows Phone 8, pricing and availability remains up in the air. Beyond China Mobile's mind-boggling number of subscribers (hovering above 660 million), the deal is significant because of Nokia's limited willingness to support the network's TD-SCDMA infrastructure. 

While unconfirmed, we're hopeful to find the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 at the heart of this variant, due to its support for both TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE. That said, because China is in no rush to adopt 4G, the MSM8260A remains a viable candidate. Regardless, perhaps Nokia will be able to turn a bit of a corner with this deal -- in more ways than one.

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Nokia calls for ethics review due to misleading Nokia Lumia 920 ad

For the past few days, Nokia has copped a lot of flak in the wake of the misleading Nokia Lumia 920 Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) ad. Nokia is clearly not taking this lightly and is quite hell bent on proving that the camera on the Lumia 920 is worth a lot of hype. First it retorted on its conversations blog and apologized for the ad, then it offered The Verge an opportunity to test the camera as they have uncovered the fake nature of the ad and now it is saying that an ethics officer will conduct a review of why misleading marketing material was published if a report by Bloomberg Businessweek is to be believed.
While it has been pretty clear, that the phones Nokia has announced are far from finished considering the Windows Phone 8 operating system has not reached a RTM build status, The Verge in its test notes that the PureView camera on the Lumia 920 is definitely worth the hype. However, it did note that Nokia did not allow its reporters to test the OIS feature for video, as it claimed the software was far from complete.
Nokia has made big deal about the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera on the Lumia 920 because of its special floating lens technology. The optical assembly of the phone floats on springs which in turn enables the user to have longer exposure times without the tension of a shaking hand inducing blur in the image. This feature again improves video quality as well.
In what ever we have seen, it looks like the Lumia 920 indeed does boast of a very advanced imaging solution, but that does not absolve Nokia for misleading its consumers. That said, it should be noted that most ads are not actual representations of a product, for instance Siri is no where as accurate as Apple depicts it in the iPhone 4S ads.

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Nokia Lumia 920 reported to come in 5 colors, Lumia 820 shows its sexy back

With less than 24 hours to go for Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 Lumia launch, Twitter user @evleaks is at it again showing glimpses of the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820. This time we can see the Lumia 920 will come in five colors – red, yellow, white, grey and black.

Another photograph shows the Lumia 820 in purple flaunting its Carl Zeiss lens and accompanying flash. The lower-end smartphone is expected to have interchangeable back covers. The renders look legit but we will still wait for Nokia to unveil the gear in NYC tomorrow.

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PlayUp Portable speakers from Partnership of Nokia and JBL

Nokia has partnered with JBL (Part of the Harman group) to launch the PlayUp Portable speakers exclusively for the upcoming Lumia range of smartphones. The cylindrical wireless speakers are an evolution of the currently available Play 360 speakers offered by Nokia, but have been updated with JBL audio technology and have a new double-shot plastic exterior for extended durability.

The PlayUp Portable speakers will have an output of 89db, but along with this its frequency response will range between 85Hz-22KHz (-6db) covering a large spectrum of sound. Nokia says that it will even have up to 10 hours of battery life as the unit has a rechargeable battery unit and weighs very less.

It will sport a plethora of connectivity options including Bluetooth, NFC (For new Lumia phones), 3.5mm and micro-USB. The product will be available in traditional Nokia CMYK color scheme including Cyan, White, Black and a new Yellow model. Strangely, the Magenta model is missing.

The PlayUp Portable speakers will be available for $187 and will ship in the US by the end of the year. Unfortunately, there is no word on India pricing and availability, but we are sure Nokia will announce the product when the company launches the new Lumia range of smartphones in India.

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Nokia Phi with PureView and Arrow Windows Phone 8 renders leaked

While Nokia and Microsoft prepare for their September 5 Windows Phone 8 event, Twitter user @evleaks is hell bent on ruining their grand surprise for the world as he has posted images of the rumored Nokia Phi and Arrow on his Twitter page.

The images leaked by @evleaks also include captions that posit the Nokia Phi to be the Lumia 920 which will have a 4.5-inch display and a PureView camera. The Nokia Arrow on the other hand will be handed the Lumia 820 name that will have a 4.3-inch display. Notably we notice some ‘Carl Zeiss’ branding near the lens, which is quite normal for Nokia phone. Both Nokia Lumia 800 and the Lumia 900 have camera lens’ built by Carl Zeiss.

Yesterday, even MyNokiaBlog had posted a similar image of the Nokia Arrow, but it did not have any details regarding the device.

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Nokia gifts Jolla MeeGo patents

Just as the buzz about Jolla started to storm the Internet with its aim of building MeeGo devices, many started wondering how will company the incorporate the beautiful swipe UI of MeeGo Harmattan seen in the N9. Well, today Jolla founder Jussi Hurmola told Finnish website ItViikko that Nokia had in fact gifted the required patents to former Nokia employees who were bound to get fired so that they could start their own venture as a part of the Nokia Bridge project.

He said that Nokia should be commended for its support rather than be panned for joining the Windows Phone camp. However, it is not known what patents were handed over to Jolla so we cannot confirm if the lovely swipe UI will ever grace another device.

Hurmola also declined to say whether apps built for the Nokia N9 will be compatible with Jolla’s MeeGo hardware, though he noted that a solid apps ecosystem, which comprised a great number of quality apps was the key to building a successful smartphone platform typified by Nokia and Microsoft’s massive campaign to woo developers for the Windows Phone platform.

MeeGo was supposed to be Nokia’s next generation smartphone platform, which would have succeeded Symbian. Nokia had tied up with Intel, which was working on its own smartphone OS, to create MeeGo. However, priorities changed when Stephen Elop took over as Nokia’s CEO and found the progress on MeeGo’s development to be too slow to make a difference in the market. Elop abandoned MeeGo and went for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform instead.

Nokia introduced only one MeeGo smartphone last year, the N9, which was launched in limited countries but got raving reviews for its UI and hardware. Nokia borrowed the N9′s laminated edge-to-edge display and polycarbonate plastic body for its first Windows Phone device, the Lumia 800.

Nokia’s Mark Durrant has reached out to SlashGear and has clarified that Nokia has not gifted any patents to Jolla. He says, “We’re proud of the support from our Bridge program to start-ups founded by former Nokia people, but we have not gifted Nokia patents to any of them, including Jolla.”

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