Rogers is carrying a new low-key Nokia (NYSE: NOK) flip, the 6750. It’s got a big keyboard for easy texting, various-coloured LEDs on the external display (blue, orange, pink, green, purple and red), a 2.0 megapixel camera, 2-inch screen, and GPS with Ovi Maps. It also has Stereo Bluetooth, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD memory card slot supporting up to 32 GB, so could be a passable music player. You might recognize the 6750 more readily as the AT&T (NYSE: T) Mural launched over the summer, and quickly pulled due to 3G connectivity issues, but hopefully those bugs have been amply squashed for the Canadian release. Anyone on Rogers (NYSE: RCI) interested in something simple can nab the Nokia 6750 for $99.99 on a three-year contract.

[via CNW]

Looks like quite a well-specced device, doesn’t it? I’m particularly liking the memory on this bad boy – matches my iPhone 3GS Gig for Gig

Nokia has announced that its latest flagship music device, the Nokia X6, will be available in the UK this Friday.

Available with Nokia’s all you can eat music service, Comes With Music, the Nokia X6 will be available exclusively through Phones4U from Friday 27 November 2009. The new Nokia X6 is available free from £35 a month, or free from £25 a month when you trade in an N-Series handset, exclusively on the Orange network at Phones 4u. It is will also be available today to pre-order from www.shop.nokia.co.uk at £449 SIM-free.

In case, somehow, you’ve forgotten the specs of the device:

• Capable of playing up to 35 hours of music,
• 32GB of on-board memory
• 3.2″ reactive interface with capacitive touchscreen
• 16:9 widescreen optimised for photos, videos and browsing and it brings 20 friends and virtual communities to the homescreen
• A 5 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss lens, you can capture and share pictures with family and friends
• Full access to the Ovi Applications Store.

Looks like quite a well-specced device, doesn’t it? I’m particularly liking the memory on this bad boy – matches my iPhone 3GS Gig for Gig

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Infineon (NYSE: IFX) are going to be working together to create HSPA and LTE chips. Nokia will be handling the modem side, while Infineon will be dealing with the hard part, the RF implementation. Since Nokia got rid of their ASIC designers back in August 2007, the Finnish company been partnering with everyone in the industry in an attempt to save costs and decrease time to market for new products, so this isn’t anything new. The exciting bit out of all this is that Nokia and Infineon are going to work together on the LTE Advanced standard. Commercial LTE networks have yet to be turned on, but it doesn’t mean the industry isn’t planning ahead. LTE Advanced should deliver around 1 gigabit/second speeds.

Complete Press Release below.

[Via: Phone Scoop, Reuters]

Infineon and Nokia Announce Collaboration to Develop Leading LTE Solutions

Neubiberg, Germany – November 25, 2009 – Infineon Technologies, one of the leading semiconductor companies for mobile phone solutions, and Nokia, the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones and services, today announced a cooperation to develop advanced radio frequency (RF) transceiver solutions. The agreement covers a non-exclusive collaboration to ensure the compatibility and interworking of Nokia’s advanced licensable baseband modem technologies and Infineon’s leading RF solutions.

Nokia and Infineon will work together to ensure that current and future generations of Nokia’s leading licensable modem designs work seamlessly with Infineon’s leading RF transceiver solutions, giving the industry access to complete modem solutions for HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) through LTE (Long Term Evolution) and beyond.

“We are grateful to expand our successful collaboration with Nokia beyond our current platform and RF activities,” stated Prof. Hermann Eul, Member of the Infineon Management Board. “Pairing Nokia’s advanced modem technology and Infineon’s best in class RF transceiver solutions, will give the industry access to very competitive chipset solutions.”

The collaboration involves teams from both companies working on the architectural and system challenges to ensure seamless interoperability and compatibility. The fruits of this cooperation will be a verified technology reference platform.

“Taking advantage of each company’s expertise as leaders in their respective fields, this cooperation will help to deliver standard-based, industry leading solutions for mobile internet devices,” said Pekka Sarlund, Vice President, Wireless Modem, Nokia.

Facilitated by this cooperation, both companies will jointly drive the interface standardization for LTE-Advanced enabling data rates of up to 1Gbit/s. Providing a validated system with an open interface will enable a fast roll out of new products and increase competition in the market for advanced modem chipsets.

Just last week we reported that Nokia will be cutting 330 jobs in Finland and Denmark, jobs in the company’s R&D department. Today Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has announced that they’re letting go of 220 more R&D employees, this time in Japan:

Nokia reduces R&D operations in Japan

Tokyo, Japan – As part of its global efforts to align its research and development (R&D) operations to be in line with its focused portfolio of future products, Nokia will be reducing its R&D activities in Japan. As previously announced last week, Nokia plans to reduce some of its R&D activities in Finland and Denmark.

Today’s announcement will impact approximately 220 employees in Japan. The total number would represent slightly more than 1% of Nokia’s R&D personnel globally.

Nokia will continue its significant sourcing activities in Japan. Japanese manufacturers are important partners who play a critical role in Nokia’s global supply-chain strategy and with whom Nokia continues to develop its world-class logistics operations.

The Japanese operation of Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia’s network infrastructure business, is not affected by this announcement and continues uninterrupted.

Vertu, Nokia’s exclusive line of handcrafted mobile phones for the luxury market, will also continue operations in Japan unaffected by today’s announcement.

That’s 550 research and development people gone in one week. What the hell is going on?! Oh yea, that’s right, Nokia reported their first loss in a decade last quarter.

As promised, the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N86 is now available at Rogers (NYSE: RCI) for $99.99 on a three-year contract after rebates. That price point is a sweet spot for a handset with an impressive 8 megapixel camera, full-bodied smartphone OS, and a form factor that still appeals to the feature phone crowd. Rogers is really going to have to bring it with their holiday lineup if they’re hoping to compete with the impressive selection Bell and telus are offering thanks to their shiny new HSPA networks. If Rogers’ “webphones” campaign pimping out the Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) X1, LG Eve, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Bold 9000, and the HTC Magic is their big holiday push, it’s clear they’re more interested in beating competitors on pricing rather than highest-end hardware. Interesting strategy – we’ll see if it pays off. You can pick up the Rogers N86 online right now, or check out our review before taking the plunge.

[via Rogers]

Along with the Nokia 6700 Slide that was announced today, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) also unveiled the 7230. This 100 EUR ($150) dumb phone has a 2.4 inch screen with 240 x 320 pixels of resolution and 262,000 colours, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 860 mAh battery, quadband GSM/EDGE, and triband WCDMA. There will be a WCDMA 850/1900/2100 MHz version for North America, and a WCDMA 900/1900/2100 MHz version for the rest of the world. You also get a 3.5 mm headphone jack, perfect for listening to your music on the go. Other than that … nothing else is really exciting about this device. Expect it to hit the market in the first quarter of 2010.

[Via: Press Release]

One more photo after the jump.

Read the full article »

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has just announced the 6700 Slide, a Symbian powered smartphone coming to market in the first quarter of 2010 for 160 EUR ($240) before taxes and subsidies. For that amount of money you get a 5 megapixel camera, 2.2 inch screen with 240 x 320 pixels of resolution, 860 mAh (tiny!) battery, quadband GSM/EDGE support, and triband WCDMA (3.5G) support. There will be a WCDMA 900/1900/2100 MHz version, presumably for Europe, and a 850/1900/2100 MHz version, perfect for the USA. There is no GPS, nor is there WiFi. Let me repeat that: no GPS, no WiFi. It’s only 110 grams, 15.9 mm thick, 95.2 mm long (in the closed position), and 46 mm wide. It has support for FM radio, 16 GB microSD cards, Bluetooth 2.1, and microUSB (unspecified whether or not this can be used to charge the device). There is no 3.5 mm headphone jack so forget about using this thing to replace your MP3 player.

And speaking about MP3 players, let’s be honest, doesn’t this thing look like a Microsoft Zune?

[Via: Press Release]

One more photo after the jump.

Read the full article »

The iPhone is a data hog. Just ask AT&T (NYSE: T) and their strained 3G data network. Data-hungry iPhone users seemingly aren’t able to satisfy their thirst for online information. They’re so ravenous for the all things internet that, according to AdMob, the iPhone accounts for 50% of all smartphone web traffic around the globe. Here, in the US, the iPhone pulls down 55% of all smartphone traffic, mostly through AT&T’s 3G network. That’s a lot of data!

It’s not just the iPhone, either. The smartphone boom has raised Android awareness high enough to boost traffic from Android smartphones to 11% worldwide. In the US, the effect is even more pronounced – Android handsets are responsible for 20% of all smartphone traffic in America. Compelling new Android offerings like the Sprint HTC Hero and T-Mobile myTouch 3G (as well as their European variants) have helped drive up Android market share. Android is fast closing the gap between itself and the iPhone platform.

But, it’s not all roses and rainbows in the smartphone sector. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has long led the mobile phone market in terms of market share, but has recently been losing share to the likes of iPhone and Android smartphones. The Finns (Nokia) are responsible for 24% of worldwide traffic, with the Symbian platform sending out 25% of all worldwide smartphone web requests. The BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) OS dropped to just 7% of global smartphone requests. Windows Mobile fared even worse, claiming just 3% of global requests. Palm (NSDQ: PALM)’s webOS, despite a European launch of the Palm Pre, dropped down to 2% of the world’s smartphone traffic.

The moral to this story? Smartphones are on the rise. But, it’s not enough to just run a smartphone operating system – consumers are flocking to intuitive touchscreen platforms with desktop-class web browsers. The iPhone and Android platforms obviously meet these criteria. Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) should be asking themselves why their offerings don’t.

[Via: AdMob] (PDF link)

You might have seen Stefan’s post recently, mentioning that the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E72 is finally in stores (and long while after it was announced, judging by the dates given) – well, eXpansys have just pinged me an email to let me know that they have the Nokia E72 in stock – at a pretty reasonable £349.99!

Rather than repeat the specs for the device, I’ll note what eXpansys say is in the box:

- Nokia E72
- Battery BP-4L
- Stereo Headset WH-601
- Data cable CA-101
- 4GB Memory Card (MU-41)
- Carry Case & Strap
- Clean Cloth
- Mains charger (AC-8)
- User guide

That’s a decent size memory card, and it’s nice to see the inclusion of a cleaning cloth – most devices these days are grease and dust magnets, so something to clean them off with is always appreciated!

If you want to grab the E72 for yourself, you can reach eXpansys by clicking here.

[Via: eXpansys]

Wondering whether you should pick up the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N97 Mini or the regular N97? Matthew Miller from Nokia Experts made a ~ 9 minute video demoing and comparing both devices; a must watch if you’re considering purchasing either of these puppies. The N97 Mini has a 3.2 inch screen versus the old brother who has a 3.5 inch screen. The camera lens on the Mini is not protected, the lens on the regular N97 is. The Mini has 1/4 the built in storage the N97 has. The N97 is made out of plastic, the Mini is made out of metal. All of these criteria, and more, should be taken into account before you drop a serious amount of money just to have the latest toys from Nokia. The Mini is only 50 pounds cheaper than the regular N97 on Expansys, so this isn’t going to be an easy choice to make.