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Don’t believe the recent gossip that Nokia and Microsoft are hooking up to make a Windows phone. A soon-to-be-former employee of Nokia claims it isn’t happening.

On his personal blog, Watts Martin explained that a partnership between Microsoft and Nokia isn’t even close to happening, because it’s unlikely Nokia would cede control of an OS to a third party.

“There is no guarantee of that at all, because it is stark raving loony,” Martin wrote. “A lot of the reporting on Nokia Ive seen seems to miss a fundamental fact: they are, in their fashion, just as insistent on control over their ecosystem as Apple is.”

Nokia has bee a diehard supporter of Symbian, an open-source operating system that’s a decade old. For years, Symbian has been the worldwide leader in smartphone OS marketshare, but some analysts say it could soon be dethroned by Google’s Android OS, which has a more modern user interface and several manufacturing partners.

“Market share is an existential threat to Symbian, it imperils the very existence of the platform,” said Gartner analyst Nick Jones. “And the main reason Symbian is losing share is the user experience which isnt competitive with Apple or Android.”

Eldar Murtazin, editor in chief of Mobile-Review editor, claimed last week that Microsoft had begun talks to make Nokia-branded smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 OS. The bleak outlook for Symbian got the tech press wondering if such a partnership would be likely.

Martin’s answer to that question would be a firm “No.”

“Nokia really does have their OS strategy figured out, and its a good one,” he said. “What they dont have figured out is user experience design…. The good news for them is that over the last year theyve started to take all those problem seriously. The bad news is that they needed to have been taking them seriously in 2007.”

Photo of a Samsung phone running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7: Mike Kane/Wired.com

Brian is a Wired.com technology reporter focusing on Apple and Microsoft. He’s also writing a book about the always-connected mobile future called Always On (publishing April 2011 by Da Capo).
Follow @bxchen and @gadgetlab on Twitter.

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Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

It hasn’t been smooth sailing for MeeGo, Intel and Nokia’s combined effort to develop a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices. A key executive departure and news that smartphones running the operating system won’t be available until sometime next year has left Intel and Nokia fighting to stay on course.

“The community around MeeGo is very strong,” Suzy Ramirez, an Intel spokesperson told Wired.com. “We are on schedule and MeeGo will be available for TVs and in-car entertainment systems soon, and other devices next year.”

MeeGo hashad a tough week. On Tuesday, Ari Jaaksi, the vice-president of Nokia’s MeeGo division, confirmed he will leave the company for “personal reasons.” Last month, Nokia went through a change of guard when CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo stepped down to be replaced by former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop.

A Nokia spokesperson has said the company’s MeeGo roadmap remains unchanged.

Meanwhile, Intel vice-president Doug Fisher told Forbes that the company expects to show the first smartphones running MeeGo operating systems early next year and have them in hands of consumers by mid-2011.

“All this has added confusion to MeeGo’s prospects, especially given the tremendous stride being made by alternative operating systems such as Android and iOS,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst with research and consulting firm Current Analysis. “Given the management changes at Nokia and the possibility that MeeGo phones could be delayed, it leaves question marks about the future of MeeGo.”

Over the last three years, the rise of smartphones and the growing popularity of tablets and streaming media players has opened the doors for new operating systems that can promise a better user experience. For instance, Android, which launched in 2008 for smartphones, has now spread to tablets and has even birthed Google TV, a platform that combines cable TV programming with sites from the internet.

MeeGo hopes to do something similar. But it started small. Last year Intel started a project called Moblin that would be a Linux-based operating system designed specifically for netbooks. Separately, Nokia had been working on a Linux-based software platform called Maemo for smartphones and tablets.

At the Mobile World Congress conference in February this year, the two companies decided to combine efforts and spawn a new OS called MeeGo. MeeGo is now hosted by the Linux Foundation and has expanded its reach to phones, tablets, TVs and even in-car entertainment systems.

Both companies desperately want to control a next-generation mobile OS. Nokia has heavily relied on Symbian, which enjoys massive popularity worldwide but is saddled with an archaic, needlessly complicated interface that hasn’t adapted well to the world of touchscreen phones. And Intel has seen success supplying its Atom chips to the netbook market, but hasn’t made significant inroads into smartphones; it’s hoping that an OS might help it leverage its chip business into a new market.

In the next few weeks, Intel plans to release a version of the nascent OS so developers can start creating the user interface required to put MeeGo on different devices. MeeGo with an Intel-developed skin is expected after that. MeeGo will have its first developers’ conference in Ireland in November.

“From a product perspective, we expect to show smartphones and tablets on MeeGo in mid-2011,” says Ramirez.

But Greengart isn’t convinced that plans for MeeGo won’t change again. Intel is dependent on Nokia to deliver the hardware that will bring MeeGo to consumers and Nokia’s big management changes could affect MeeGo’s future, he says.

So far, Nokia has said that it plans to use the Symbian OS for low and mid-level smartphones and build MeeGo into high-end devices that are more focused on computing.

“The problem is that Nokia executives, including the CEO who talked about this strategy just a week or two ago, are not there. And who knows what’s going in the company,” says Greengart. “The future of MeeGo depends on how much Nokia and Intel are willing to stick to their plans in a fast-changing world.”

Photo: MeeGo Phone browser (Steve Paine/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Android phone owners are in for some bad news. The company has delayed the rollout of the upgrade to Android 2.1 version of the operating system for Xperia phones in the U.S.

Instead of updating existing devices–the Xperia X10, Xperia X10 mini and Xperia X10 mini pro–to Android 2.1 at the end of September, Xperia owners will get new features added at the end of October and onwards.

“We are, of course, not happy about the change of launch timing but we have had to spend some additional time on the software to really makes sure we roll-out with the right quality and user experience,” says Sony Ericsson on its product blog.

The move is yet another example of how Sony Ericsson’s Android plans have been plagued by delays.

Despite the beautiful hardware Sony Ericsson’s phones have never enjoyed the same level of popularity in the U.S. as the company’s rivals. Last year, Sony Ericsson turned to Android in the hope that it would more effectively compete in the smartphones market. But it has been slow to bring Android devices to market.

Sony Ericsson worked for months on creating a skin for Android called UXP. The UXP skin brought in features such as Timescape that collects social networking feeds and presents them in a card-like view. It added a recommendation engine for music and a widget to access photos and video.

Though it was attractive, the user interface significantly delayed Sony Ericsson’s launch of Android phones. In August, the Xperia X10 debuted on the AT&T network for $150 with a two-year contract. The Xperia X10 launched with version 1.6 of the Android OS, as did the X10 mini and X10 mini pro.

Clearly, that version of the OS is extremely outdated and Sony Ericsson is trying to fix it with its latest update.

With its upcoming rollout, the company plans to offer Xperia users features such as HD video recording with continuous auto-focus, five homescreens for apps, widgets, shortcuts and folders and social phonebook that automatically syncs contact pictures from Facebook and shows when your friends are online.

Almost all of these features are already standard on most Android phones.

Sony Ericsson is struggling to catch up and along the way, Xperia users are finding themselves without the most current software and features. Even with the upcoming update, Xperia users won’t be on the latest Android platform. Current Xperia models are unlikely to see Android 2.2 Froyo for a very long time.

Photo: Priya Ganapati/Wired.com

[via Unwired View]

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

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Nokia may be the underdog in the smartphone industry but it is fighting hard to beat competition. The company has introduced three new smartphones running Symbian operating system. The devices also integrate with the company’s improved Ovi services and apps store.

The three new phones are the Nokia E7, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6. Though display sizes and features vary across them, the devices have in common support for multiple homescreens and visual multitasking.

The phones are all expected to begin shipping before the end of the year.

Nokia has faced criticism for the user interface and Symbian operating system powering its phones. The company’s hardware and industrial design on phones have won it kudos but when it comes to the user experience, even die-hard Nokia fans hesitate to pronounce it the best. Meanwhile, the rise of Android OS and the proliferation of Apple’s iPhone has put additional pressure on Nokia.

Nokia says it remains confident that Symbian OS can stay ahead and to ensure that it has rewritten parts of the OS to make it faster and easier to use.

“Despite new competition, Symbian remains the most widely used smartphone platform in the world,” says Niklas Savander, executive vice president at Nokia in a statement.

Though the new phones sound like an alphabet soup, here’s the lowdown on each. There’s no word on the processor used in any of these phones but Nokia has offered enough details to get consumers excited about the devices.

Nokia E7

The E7 is Nokia’s new phone targeted at business users. The device has a 4-inch touchscreen, access to Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, security features such as lock and wipe functionality and access to Microsoft Share Point Server.

The phone has a full keyboard in a design similar to that of the Motorola Droid.

The E7 is pretty slim, about 13.6mm thick. It has a 8-megapixel camera and comes with 16 GB of on-board storage.

The E7 also boasts an HDMI connection and Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound. Users can customize up to three homescreens and get updates from Facebook and Twitter on their homescreens. The E7 will offer about 9 hours of talk time and 18 days of standby time.

The device will cost about 495 Euros ($645), excluding taxes and subsidies.

Nokia C7

The C7 is a phone for social media addicts. The device pulls feeds from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and integrates email from Yahoo, Gmail and other accounts to show them directly on the home screen.

The C7 features a 3.5-inch AMOLED display and is about 10.5 mm thick. It has a 8-megapixel camera and can shoot video at 720p resolution. The phone has 8GB of onboard storage–expandable to 40 GB with microSD.

The device is estimated to be priced at 335 Euros ($437), excluding taxes and subsidies.

Nokia C6

The C6 is the baby of the group. The phone has a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen display. And as with the C7, this phone will have a 8-megapixel camera. It will support microSD up to 32 GB and capture HD video in 720p.

The C6 will cost about 260 Euros ($339), excluding taxes and subsidies.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you love Nokia hardware but wish for a better operating system, consider what some enthusiastic developers have done.

As part of a project called NITDroid, the developers have created a compatible version of Android operating system for Nokia’s internet tablets. The result is a device that has the body of Nokia and the brains of Android.

“Nokia’s hardware is fantastic but their software is sub optimal, slow buggy and not always the best user experience,” says Terrence Eden, a U.K.-based mobile consultant who installed Android 1.6 ‘Donut’ on his Nokia N810. “Android is a much better software environment for Nokia hardware than what Nokia provides.”

Eden’s Nokia-Android hybrid works well except for access to Google Market and apps, he says.

Meanwhile developers have created a stable version of Android 2.2 Froyo for the Nokia N900, which ships with Nokia’s Maemo operating system. They have been able to get calls, data and Google apps going on the hacked device. The only missing feature is camera support.

This is not the first time a phone has been hacked to run an entirely different kind of operating system. Eager to experience Android’s features, some intrepid smartphone users hacked their Windows Mobile phones to run Android.

With Android for Nokia phones, the NITdroid project has had varying degrees of success. So far, they have attempted to port Android for Nokia’s tablet range of devices–which means the Nokia N770, N800, N810, and N900.

“On the N810., everything is pretty much functional. It isn’t a phone so there’s no call functionality to deal with,” says Eden.

But with the N900, users have found themselves unable to use the Android-powered device to make calls on a 3G network or change the screen brightness.

Tweaking the Nokia phones to change its operating system to Android isn’t for everyone, says Eden.

“It’s not something anyone off the street can do,” he says. “It’s a bit like installing Linux on the PC that you bought off Best Buy.”

But for those who are willing to take the risk, Eden has written a step-by-step guide on his blog for getting Android on the N810. The NITDroid wiki also has an installation guide for other Nokia phones.

Photo: Terence Eden

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews