At the Mobile World Congress today, Nokia has announced a range of exciting new products, with information following below.One of its new products is the E55 smartphone. The phone has many interesting features, including the fact it is the worlds thinnest smartphone, but another great thing about it is that it can have up to a month standby battery life, "Maybe the most of any smartphone in the world."
The phone itself uses a half Qwerty keypad, which Nokia calls 'compact'. It is also noted that Nokia uses the most high quality materials to build the phone, increasing the general durability of it. It will be available for 265 euros this Summer, which is an unsubsidized price. It wasn't clarified if this would be tied to any specific carrier.
Secondly, a new phone called the Nokia E75 has been announced. It has a range of features, one of which being that it is the first Nokia phone with Nokia Messaging built right in. It is a full Qwerty-capable phone, with the keyboard on a slider. It will be available for pre-order on Nokia's site today, and shipping next month, for 375 euros.
A new service has been announced, touted as a next generation media delivery system, named the Ovi Store. This isn't a regular store; it takes social networking features into account, meaning it knows what your friends are buying, etc. Download, Mosh and widgets are going to be the main focus of the store, and the first device with the Ovi Store integrated into it will be the Nokia N97. Luckily, S40 and S60 customers will be able to download the service starting in May. CEO of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said, "Over time, the service will start to learn your tastes and anticipate what you might want." Interestingly, it will also recommend applications based on your location. Certainly a unique app store feature.
Nokia, not one to be left behind, has also announced that the store will have monetized features, with access at publish.ovi.com. 70% of the revenue from the apps will go to developers, with 30% going to Nokia. Nokia's already hit the ground running with the Ovi store with a range of partners already announced; EA, MySpace, Facebook, Qik, Lonely Planet and even Fox.
More details on these products and services will come to light very shortly, when Nokia's website is updated with the newly released information.
Looks pretty meh . . .
And if this is the n75, it seems to be the mobile phone equivalent of a sleeping pill:
http://www.mobilefonereviews.co.uk/phone-r.../Nokia-E75.aspx
Symbian isn't very impressive, and now Orange is launching its own App Store version. These competitors seem to lack key elements in the formula, one way or the other. There's a difference between cobbling something together to get involved in the herd-like App Store cash-grab, and focusing on the user experience itself. Lots of bandwagon-jumpers, but it all seems like just a knee-jerk reaction to Apple's success at this point. I wish the competition well, but unless they've got something Pre-like (if not Apple-like), it's just more crap on the pile.
Everyone's playing "follow the leader", but it would be refreshing to see someone else lead for a while. There seems to be no impetus or ambition (aside from the usual suspect) whatsoever in the industry to be the "first" anymore - that is, the "first" to either innovate something totally new or otherwise implement something truly well. The other truly exciting device is the Pre, which funnily enough, comes to you from the hands of ex-Apple engineers.
Last edited by LTD on 16 Feb 2009 - 13:54
I might upgrade just for the massive battery life alone!
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