Stefan Constantinescu has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices.
He has been blogging since 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007, then got a job at Nokia in March of 2008, but has now rejoined the IntoMobile team as of June 2009. He is currently based out of Finland.
Stefan is a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet and he knows that there are others like him out there. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you!
Steve O’Hear is in London this week for the 2009 Symbian Exchange and Exposition and had a brief sit down with Anders Westin, Head of Software Relations, Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE). Several questions were asked, mainly concerning Sony Ericsson’s current portfolio which spans every single smartphone operating system under the sun, including, hopefully, Android 2.0 on the XPERIA X3, but the kicker was Steve asking Anders why the Sony Ericsson Satio had such a piss poor battery. The Satio, for those unfamiliar with the device, has a 3.5 inch touch screen, runs Symbian S60 5th Edition and has a 12 megapixel camera. It eats batteries for breakfast. Sony Ericsson has been shipping the Satio with a 1000 mAh battery, and when Steve brought this up to up with Anders, he seemed a bit shocked. “Don’t you mean 1350mAh?” he said, lifting the battery cover off his device to reveal a 35% larger 1350 mAh battery, to which Steve, and many customers around the world, replied “ummm no. what the fuck?”
Looks like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) published this video to their YouTube channel before actually writing a blog post. Their fault, your benefit. Enjoy:
By the way, notice how it was demoed on the upcoming Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid for Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless?
Update: And that blog post just went live. Read it to learn more about what you’ve just seen in the video above. For a comprehensive feature list of Android 2.0 click here; kind of funny to see macro focus and flash being integrated into the camera application barely a full year after Android 1.0 hit the net. A techie feature of note: Android 2.0 has the first mobile web browser to support the video tag from HTML 5.
When you’re a company that makes revenues almost exclusively from the sale of mobile handsets, whoring of patents aside, then you take counterfeit hardware pretty seriously. In China it’s really easy to find a Nokia (NYSE: NOK) clone, powered by a MediaTek chipset, running some local operating system that most users in the region have no problem using. That is why today Nokia has announced that they’re teaming up with SAP and Giesecke & Devrient to start a new company called “Original1″ by the end of the year, headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, to deal with the problem.
Full Press Release after the jump. Emphasis added by yours truly.
Opera has released their monthly “State of the Mobile Web” report that highlights how Opera Mini users are as addicting to web surfing as teenage girls are to pop music with sexually suggestive lyrics. I’ve been a long time Opera Mini user, and have written a lengthy review of their latest beta of Opera Mini 5, so with my fanboi credentials in hand, time to quote some statistics:
“This month, we passed two major milestones: more than 500 million page-views per day, on average, and more than 2 petabytes of data processed by our servers every month.” – Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner
In September 2009, Opera Mini had over 35.6 million users, an 11.5% increase from August 2009 and more than 150% compared to September 2008.
Opera Mini users viewed nearly 15 billion pages in September 2009. Since August, page-views have gone up 7.2%. Since September 2008, page-views have increased 230%.
In September 2009, Opera Mini users generated nearly 227 million MB [Note: That is 221,680 GB] of data for operators worldwide. Since August, the data consumed went up by 8.7%. Since September 2008, data traffic is up 224%.
Toshiba (OTCPK: TOSBF), using pixels that are only 1.4 microns small, will be mass producing a 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor that measures 1/2.3 inches starting in Q3 2010. The sensors will be made using Toshiba’s 65 nm process on 300 mm wafers, yielding about half a million sensors a month when production begins. They’ll support back-side illumination, see photo below, which can increase light absorption by 40% compared to the previous generation of Toshiba sensors. Whether or not we’ll see these in handsets shipping during the 2010 holiday season is still up in the air. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) only has one 8 megapixel camera on the market, and Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) is just now starting to ship their 12 megapixel beast, so 14.6 feels like a millennium away. Remember this however, at the end of the day it’s the optics and image processing algorithms that make or break a camera phone. Don’t let the number on the side of the box fool you.
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has sent specifications of the device to Australian media companies in an effort to sound out whether they would be interested in delivering their content to the tablet.
Ummm what? Since when does Apple give anyone the specifications to their devices before shipping them? Is Apple aiming to announce the iTablet, say it is going to ship “tomorrow”, and have content partners already lined up? Doubtful. They’ll probably do what they did with the iPhone and announce it a few months before shipping it so media companies have time to get their shit together and format their content for the iTablet, if an iTablet even exists, which I have to repeat is total bullshit.
Here is another quote of epic proportions:
The tablet is tipped to be a larger version of the iPhone. It is small enough to carry in a handbag but too big to fit in a pocket.
Carry in a handbag? So you’re saying the number one users of this device will be women? Men who carry bags do so because they carry around a laptop.
But seriously, just how credible is The Sydney Morning Herald? They said this on October 27th 2009:
Apple is also working with the major music studios to develop a new album format, delivered over iTunes, that will include liner notes, artwork and potentially mobile ringtones and music videos in a unified software package that the labels hope will boost sales of albums, instead of just single tracks.
It’s called iTunes LP and it was announced on September 9th. I hope this blog post, and every other blog post linking to your bullshit to fuel the iTablet rumour, gets you some page views because maybe then you could hire someone to do your fucking research.
This software release improves touch screen usability, allowing you to scroll smoothly through content by flicking the screen. Ovi Maps 3.1 brings 3-D maps, more accurate positioning, and improved search. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) (NYSE: NOK) e-mail (Nokia Messaging), Ovi Contacts, Ovi Store, and VoIP support have been added. This release also includes improvements in memory and battery performance, and in image and video stability. To get this software through your device, select Applications > SW Updates and choose the software you want to update.
Someone will surely post something today regarding their experiences with the new firmware. This post will be updated throughout the day with those findings.
“Best ’secret’ enhancement in N97 v20 is the bump in speaker volume – the device just got a whole lot better for listening to podcasts! 8-)” – @stevelitchfield
A video just came out highlighting the kinetic scrolling. Hat tip to @Jussipekka:
Wired has a Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N900 in house (while I’m still waiting for my review unit, if it ever shows up at all) and they’ve given it a brief ~ 3 minute review. For an American publication to say that $650 is a bargain for a mobile device is shocking enough to raise my eyebrows. Also note how the reviewer refuses to call this thing a smartphone, sticking to the ancient “Internet Tablet” moniker, a term that Nokia Maemo Devices Vice President Ari Jaaksi has always secretly hated, going so far as to say that “a tablet is something you eat when you are sick”.
Identity Crisis aside, check out this video while you count down the days, weeks, and if you’re Swedish the months, until the N900 ships:
China has their own 3G standard. First thing you may be asking yourself is why? China has always done their own thing, and by developing an alternative to WCDMA they save themselves the burden of having to pay for WCDMA royalties. Every decision in today’s mobile world, and I mean every single bloody decision from the materials used to make the body of a device, to whether the instruction manual inside the package comes printed in color or black and white, comes down to money. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) feels that with China’s population of 1.3 billion people, playing their game and making devices that work on their network would be beneficial to their bottom line.
Politics out of the way, does anything make the 6788 special? Well it has two 8s in the product name, which is a big thing in China. Some Chinese, a fair bit actually, are still superstitious and believe that the number 8 will bring them good luck. When picking a mobile phone number, they want to make sure it has as many 8s as possible, and they’ll even pay to have a phone number with a lot of 8s. Specification wise you have a massive 2.8 inch screen that is sadly QVGA (320 x 240) resolution, a 5 megapixel camera, and it’s powered by S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. The 6788 will star shipping in December on China Mobile (NYSE: CHL), price unknown. Looks like Colin Giles, Nokia Senior Vice President for Greater China, Japan and Korea, kept his promise.
