“Even more unique to the N8 is having an FM transmitter (no, not an FM radio, please don’t get the two confused!) – I can’t think of many other mobile devices which can match this trick. You don’t think you need this function until you start trying it. In the car, it’s a fabulous way to stream music or podcasts from your phone to any car radio. In the home, I’ve used it several times to get Internet radio and podcasts onto a home hifi or ghetto blaster, it has saved the day several times when the appropriate leads, adapters, etc weren’t available. FM is a little old school, but sometimes old school is a great lowest common denominator for spanning the gap between items of real world equipment.”

To me this offers the final nail in the coffin for Symbian- without Nokia, it really isn’t even worth considering now. It is a real shame for the 4,000 who will lose their jobs, but I guess we could all see it coming.

Apple has come clean on the iOS location tracking issue by posting a Q&A on the subject- “Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software update that:

• reduces the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,
• ceases backing up this cache, and
• deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.

In the next major iOS software release the cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone.”

RIM has acquired Tungle which will potentially offer the ability to share calendar data over different platforms on PIM hardware. That would be more than useful on the PlayBook… “This is exciting for you too as we expect the Tungle service to only get better. Our plan today is what it has always been – for Tungle to become integrated with your daily activities and be ubiquitous within the applications you’re already using. When you think scheduling, Tungle should be at your fingertips.”

“Now, hear me out, I’m not suggesting that the Psion can compete with the E7, this article is, in this sense, academic. I’m simply curious in how much technology has changed in 12 years (an eternity in consumer electronics), with respect of devices with similar aims and form factors. And are there any areas where we’ve gone backwards?”

Espoo, Finland and Redmond, US – Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced the signing of a definitive agreement on a partnership that will result in a new global mobile ecosystem, utilizing the very complementary assets of both companies. Completed ahead of schedule, the definitive agreement is consistent with the joint announcement made on February 11.

In addition to agreeing to the terms of their partnership, including joint contributions to the development of the new ecosystem, Nokia and Microsoft also announced significant progress on the development of the first Nokia products incorporating Windows Phone. With hundreds of personnel already engaged on joint engineering efforts, the companies are collaborating on a portfolio of new Nokia devices. Nokia has also started porting key applications and services to operate on Windows Phone and joint outreach has begun to third party application developers.

“At the highest level, we have entered into a win-win partnership,” said Stephen Elop, President and CEO of Nokia Corporation. “It is the complementary nature of our assets, and the overall competitiveness of that combined offering, that is the foundation of our relationship.”

“Our agreement is good for the industry,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “Together, Nokia and Microsoft will innovate with greater speed, and provide enhanced opportunities for consumers and our partners to share in the success of our ecosystem.”

The relationship is structured around four broad areas:

1. A combination of complementary assets, which make the partnership truly unique, including:

- Nokia to deliver mapping, navigation, and certain location-based services to the Windows Phone ecosystem. Nokia will build innovation on top of the Windows Phone platform in areas such as imaging, while contributing expertise on hardware design and language support, and helping to drive the development of the Windows Phone platform. Microsoft will provide Bing search services across the Nokia device portfolio as well as contributing strength in productivity, advertising, gaming, social media and a variety of other services. The combination of navigation with advertising and search will enable better monetization of Nokia’s navigation assets and completely new forms of advertising revenue.
- Joint developer outreach and application sourcing, to support the creation of new local and global applications, including making Windows Phone developer registration free for all Nokia developers.
- Opening a new Nokia-branded global application store that leverages the Windows Marketplace infrastructure. Developers will be able to publish and distribute applications through a single developer portal to hundreds of millions of consumers that use Windows Phone, Symbian and Series 40 devices.
- Contribution of Nokia’s expertise in operator billing to ensure participants in the Windows Phone ecosystem can take advantage of Nokia’s billing agreements with 112 operators in 36 markets.

2. Microsoft will receive a running royalty from Nokia for the Windows Phone platform, starting when the first Nokia products incorporating Windows Phone ship. The royalty payments are competitive and reflect the large volumes that Nokia expects to ship, as well as a variety of other considerations related to engineering work to which both companies are committed. Microsoft delivering the Windows Phone platform to Nokia will enable Nokia to significantly reduce operating expenses.

3. In recognition of the unique nature of Nokia’s agreement with Microsoft and the contributions that Nokia is providing, Nokia will receive payments measured in the billions of dollars.

4. An agreement that recognizes the value of intellectual property and puts in place mechanisms for exchanging rights to intellectual property. Nokia will receive substantial payments under the agreement.

With the definitive agreement now signed, both companies will begin engaging with operators, developers and other partners to help the industry understand the benefits of joining the new ecosystem. At the same time, work will continue on developing Nokia products on the Windows Phone platform, with the aim of securing volume device shipments in 2012. The scale of both companies’ mutual commitment is significant and is in keeping with the intention to build a new ecosystem based on this long-term, strategic partnership.

Available to pre-order for £466

Highlights-

Symbian 3 for Nokia
Full QWERTY keyboard
4” AMOLED touch screen
8 mega pixel camera with dual LED flash
720p high definition video recording
Full web browsing of real websites
HDMI connection
Bluetooth 3.0

Software

When I first powered up the E7 I was greeted with a plethora of boxes, icons and widgets that covered the gamut of what a smartphone can do. From BBC iPlayer to Facebook to email, it is all on the home screen(s) and can be confusing for new users. What surprised me most was the lag when swiping between home screens- this is a review device with no extra software installed and yet there was still a noticeable lag when moving around.

The entire interface is fiddly and far from intuitive. There is a lot of screen real estate here, but Nokia has still managed to cram it full of stuff and make it feel cluttered. This desire to offer as many apps and features to a new user as possible is being done away with by others such as Sony Ericsson and Samsung and Nokia needs to carefully consider how they set up new Symbian phones because it isn’t quite working at the moment.

I could go on about the software, but it would take too long. I haven’t used Symbian for a while, but there are multiple areas where the interface and performance could be speeded up. The web browser, for example, is very slow to load complex pages and when I first started it up I wanted to enter a URL. I was greeted with a basic list of bookmarks and no URL bar. I then had to press ‘options’, then ‘go to’ at which point a new menu appears with the following options; New web page, web search and web feeds. I then had to tap ‘new web page’ and I could enter a URL. As it happens the display of text on web pages is not great either with tiny fonts that are far too thin to read easily.

There are too many areas where extra steps are needed, even in third party offerings. Little things annoy me like entering my email address in the Gmail app- once typed in I had to click options and then choose from ‘OK’, ‘Add from Contacts’, ‘Editing Options’ and ‘Writing Language’. If I had just typed in an email address I would presume that OK should be available with one tap. That particular solution gets worse by the way, but I couldn’t face using it any more so gave up.

I decided instead to set up my main email account. I went to the front screen and then tapped applications which brought up the mail app. I chose to set up a new account and a box for the email address popped up. There is an ‘@’ at the start of this box- type the first part of the email address and then jump over it to complete the address. Add your password and then enter everything else manually. I haven’t had to manually enter my mailbox settings on a smartphone for a year now so why here?

Anyway, I entered all of the settings correctly, it went off to check the settings each step of the way, and when I got to the main mailbox page it wouldn’t connect and told me to go off and check my settings. Two days later it still won’t connect.

It is remarkably frustrating to use, in almost every area, and has highlighted to me that Nokia is right to move away from Symbian. Sadly it has also highlighted that Nokia does not understand how to make hardware or software that normal people will want to use. Everything about the software is frustrating and the power button became more annoying as time went on as well. It is tiny, flush to the surface and just about impossible to hit without some serious thought. This isn’t software related, but is a pain when the screen keeps turning off after a few seconds (despite being set up to turn off after longer periods). AAAARGH!!!!!

General Performance

There is a general malaise about the way the E7 works which can be summed up in two words- it’s slow. Little delays take away the feeling of a high-end device powered by good quality innards. It isn’t underpowered at all, but the software doesn’t seem to quite fit the hardware in this instance. A shame.

Camera

Oh well. At least we can expect a Nokia camera to be great.

It is good of course, but not as good as I was expecting. In bright sunlight it struggled to catch colours the way the N8 does, but in dark conditions the flash is excellent and produced photos you rarely see from a smartphone.

Video capture also performed brilliantly in darker conditions and the 720p output was very good indeed. It is a Nokia so we would expect a decent camera, but I wonder how important this feature is to people within the target market for this phone.

I would have added some example photos, but am still struggling to set up my email account to buzz them over.

Battery

Good for 2 days use with moderate usage. Heavy Wi-Fi use pounds it a bit, but it is typically Nokia in this area and pretty good.

Call quality / signal

No problems here. Read any of my previous Nokia reviews and you know what to expect. Nokia got these areas sorted long ago and has, rightly, seen no need to change things.

In my Nokia N8 review I wrote- “Symbian^3 is by far the most complicated to use OS of the bunch and is at times unusable unless you are a hardened Symbian user who is completely familiar with the way the system works. It is not even close to defendable and in direct comparisons to iOS, Android, Windows Phone and even BlackBerry OS 6 it feels like an OS from 3 or 4 years back.”

Sadly that is still true and so I will conclude here with an unfinished review. Despite a form factor that is near perfect for me and a keyboard that is truly excellent, the software and the way the hardware is built consign the E7 to being merely a footnote in the history of Symbian. The lack of an expansion card slot and a fairly low screen resolution don’t help. One for hardened Symbian users only.

Available to pre-order for £466.80

Highlights-

Symbian 3 for Nokia
Full QWERTY keyboard
4” AMOLED touch screen
8 mega pixel camera with dual LED flash
720p high definition video recording
Full web browsing of real websites
HDMI connection
Bluetooth 3.0

As you can see the price is high and the specs are impressive. This phone is without doubt aimed at those who want to communicate and undertake multiple tasks throughout a normal day and those who have a need for a quality photography experience. It is a serious device and displays this in every part of the design.

When I first picked it up I was impressed by the quality of the build and there is little doubt that Nokia can make a phone that feels solid as nails. The sheer quality throughout the device is exceptional and there are no creaks or rattles in sight. It is almost perfectly constructed.

But…

The consequence of using metal in every part of the design is that the phone is not easy to hold. It feels incredibly slippery and makes you grip it harder than you would most other phones. This is compounded when you try to slide open the keyboard; the mechanism is very tough and requires some force when you first use it, a force that cause me to drop the phone 3 times when I opened the keyboard initially.

It’s a case of good and bad because this mechanism makes for an extremely tough feel when the keyboard is open, but getting there could be easier. UPDATE: I eventually worked out how to open the keyboard without applying too much force and this makes a difference, but should I really have to scratch my head and work out how to open out a keyboard on a phone? UPDATE: And I have dropped the phone a further two times…

Anyway, the hardware is seriously tough and the design is a love it or hate it affair that will gain the affections of some and the loathing of others. To me it looks great when the keyboard is open, almost futuristic, but with the keyboard shut it is incredibly bland and offers almost zero personality. It is black metal tapered at each end with a few buttons dotted here and there and a business-like approach from every angle. I can only presume that Nokia is aiming this phone at business because the design will not sell itself to the average person on the street. Then again, if that is the case why is there an 8 Megapixel camera here?

It’s a confusing design which doesn’t quite add up, and one that leaves me with one question-

At the end of 2010 Nokia had 132,000 employees. The E7 is one if its flagship phones and is thus important to Nokia. If we presume that those 132,000 employees work 35 hours a week that is a total of 4,620,000 hours worked per week. Why did no-one in Nokia give this phone to one employee for 30 minutes (or 0.0000108225% of the Nokia working week) and ask them how it felt to use?

What kind of corporate culture lets a phone with such a hard to use design have so much money invested in it?

The irony is that the keyboard is not too bad to use and the viewing angle of the screen is perfect, but the opening mechanism and materials used on the outside of the phone defy logic to me.

The box contents are quite steady with an HDMI cable, AC charger, sync cable, half-decent headphones and that’s your lot. Not a great bundle, but enough to get you started.

Rounding off the hardware, the buttons are very good indeed. From the quirky volume slider to the camera shutter button they are easy to hit and of extremely good quality. The top side is busy with the headphone jack, on/off key, HDMI and microUSB slots all crammed together. It does all work well though and makes for a setup that is easy to use yet will not cause problems should you carry it around in your pocket.

I will detail exactly how well, or not, the E7 works in part two and that will include the screen, software and everything else, but it is safe to say that from a hardware point of view Nokia has used some great materials and then stuck them together to build a quirky design that you will either love or hate. There is no in-between here.

• Open Maps, Drive, Check in and Guides with a just tap on your home screen.
• Search now includes a tab for favourites. Predictive search also works offline.
• Place pages have a new design including a new image gallery, user reviews, descriptions by business owners, leading guides and local content providers, e.g. TripAdvisor, HRS, Expedia additionally to Lonely Planet, Michelin guides, TimeOut, Qype and WCities.
• Easily change the map views in Drive navigation by tapping the views icon. You can pan the map to see the next move and explore the map within the route overview.
• Tap on Guides and immediately see the weather forecast for your location or another city.

There is a corporate problem at Nokia for sure. There is an even bigger one at Microsoft, but we can’t ignore the slow movement of RIM and Google as well. ALL smartphone companies are big these days and they will all slim down- it’s just that some need a heavier diet than others.

The new Nokia X7, however, looks like a pig. It may well have an impressive 4″ AMOLED screen, HD games and lots of clever new features, but who on earth thought of the design?

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced that its Ovi Store has grown by nearly eight times over the last year and now reaches up to 5 million downloads per day, propelled by the latest Symbian devices – the Nokia N8, Nokia C6-01, Nokia C7 and Nokia E7 – which account for about 15 percent of the daily downloads.

Increased demand for apps from the approximate 200-million-strong Symbian consumer base has seen the Ovi Store catalogue grow to more than 40 000 apps, with about 1 000 added per week. This momentum has resulted in 158 developers from 41 countries now surpassing the million download milestone each for their apps.

Nokia’s new monetization opportunities for developers are tailored for local markets and include integrated operator billing with 112 operators in 36 markets, more than 25 times more operator billing integrations than Nokia’s nearest competitor. Ovi Store has seen integrated operator billing increase consumer transactions by up to four times and this, coupled with Nokia’s beta programs for in-app billing and in-app advertising, means more revenue opportunities for developers on Symbian.

These opportunities are also being extended to Nokia Series 40 devices, which will enable apps for the next billion mobile phone consumers. The refreshed Ovi Store experience, previously available only for the new Symbian devices, has resulted in more than 35 percent growth in downloads for Series 40 devices in the last two months, making up about a quarter of the total downloads.

Developers and publishers, large and small, are using Ovi Store’s global reach and rapid growth to cultivate new communities. These communities are driven by deeper user connections within their apps, further driving downloads and potential monetization opportunities for developers.

“This week, Nokia announces a new typeface and a new look for promotional materials. It’s a new brand image that’s simpler, fresher and stronger than before. Today we’ve been lucky enough to get a sneak preview of some assets, starting with the new Nokia font, Nokia Pure.”

Dear Nokia Developer,

Much has been said in the last few weeks about Nokia’s announced strategy. I’ve heard from many of you with encouragement, concerns and questions. Please do continue the dialog with me and the Forum Nokia team.

I want to take a moment to focus on what these announcements mean to you, how Nokia plans to support your development needs and how this translates into opportunities today and in the future.

First, let’s recap what it is we announced; the three main areas of our strategy:

Plans for a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft on Windows Phone
Connecting the Next Billion
Future disruptive technologies
What about Symbian? What about Qt?

Understandably, these are the first questions that come to mind. Although Windows Phone will become our primary smartphone platform, we will continue to deliver a great deal of value from Symbian. We’re making investments that will help us to engage and attract existing and new Symbian users and allow us to launch new competitive smartphones.

Over the past weeks we have been evaluating our Symbian roadmap and now feel confident we will have a strong portfolio of new products during our transition period – i.e. 2011 and 2012.  These devices will take advantage of the strong integration of devices and services as well as our strength in areas such as imaging and location-based services. They will also include improvements in hardware performance such as GHz+ processing capabilities and faster graphics speeds.

To further enhance the competitiveness of these products we will deliver updates to the current Symbian user experience.  The first major update will arrive in summer, delivering a new home screen, new flexible widgets, new icons, a faster browser, new Navbar and a fresh look and feel to Ovi Store and Ovi Maps, including integration of social media services in Ovi Maps.

You may have seen some of these updates in the latest product we launched at CTIA Wireless this year, the Nokia C7 Astound.  Those plus the rest of the enhancements will be delivered to all users over the air in a simple update available from the Home Screen, and Nokia Astound users will receive the remaining enhancements not already in their device at the same time.

I’ve been asked many times how long we will support Symbian and I’m sure for many of you it feels we have been avoiding the question.  The truth is, it is very difficult to provide a single answer.  We hope to bring devices based on Windows Phone to market as quickly as possible, but Windows Phone will not have all language and all localization capabilities from day one.

In many markets, including markets where Symbian is currently the lead smartphone platform with significant market share such as China, India, Russia and Turkey, we will continue to make our Symbian portfolio as competitive as possible while we work with Microsoft to introduce Windows Phone.  For that reason certain markets will play a more significant role in selling the 150 million Symbian devices than others and we will be selling devices long after Windows Phone devices from Nokia have already started to appear in other markets.  That is why we cannot give you the date when Symbian will no longer be supported.

What I can promise you is that we will not just abandon Symbian users or developers.  As a very minimum, we have a legal obligation, varying in length between countries, to support users for a period of time after the last product has been sold.  Our intention is that when users come to the end of the natural lifecycle of their Symbian device they will make the change to a Nokia Windows Phone device and so it would not be in our interests to undermine their Nokia smartphone experience.  Operators have also been very supportive in their commitment to help us continue to sell and support Symbian devices while we make the transition to Windows Phone.  We currently stand at 109 operators in 34 countries and no doubt they continue to recognize the opportunities in a platform that has great localization, differentiation and flexible billing services, while we start to build great new devices with Microsoft.

Qt, the development platform for Symbian and future MeeGo technology remains critically important and Nokia is committed to investment in Qt as the best toolset for those platforms and we are focusing on future developments in part by our plan to divest the commercial licensing business, used mainly by developers of embedded and desktop applications beyond the mobile market.

Additionally we are readying app analytics, in-app advertising, in-app purchasing, a new browser and hardware enhancements. There are a lot of new things for developers to take advantage of in these soon-to-be-released APIs. We are continuing to explore Qt for use in other strategic investment areas as well.
So in short, there are some very exciting things happening in Symbian and Qt, lots of new devices and platform improvements and we believe consumers will be downloading great developer apps from these devices. All together, this means your investment in Qt is a safe choice for skill competency, monetization opportunities and brand awareness amongst our millions of users.

The partnership announcement has many of you wondering how Forum Nokia and Microsoft will support you in the future. As we carefully plan this with Microsoft we will be able to share more information. However, we are listening to your concerns and comments. Nokia and Microsoft share a view and commitment to make the transition as smoothly as possible for developers.

The second pillar of Nokia’s strategy, ‘Internet for the Next Billion’ also highlights our increased focus on opportunities for developers, especially Java developers. Nokia sells over one million features phones a day; a staggering number by any measure. Developers can already distribute Java apps to approximately 600 million Series 40 devices.

We intend to drive more innovation and improvement in Series 40 developer engagement. We are continuing to develop easy-to-use tools and software developer kits to make it simple, easier and more affordable for Java developers to work with us. For example, there is free signing for Java apps; the new SDK for Touch and Type UI is in the market now; plus we have plans for increased proxy browsing capabilities on our device and support for web apps.

Consumers around the world are hungry for apps on Nokia devices.

The disruptive technologies area of our strategy includes our work on MeeGo and Nokia Research Center, Nokia’s future looking, global labs. You will hear more from us on MeeGo in coming months.

Finally, there is still $10M up for grabs in the Calling All Innovators contest. The deadline is approaching – March 31 – so be sure to submit your app. If the content of your app is applicable to consumers in the US and Canada, you could get a piece of the $10M in cash and prizes. Giving out these big checks and seeing your apps get downloaded by millions of consumers is the best part of my job!

In the coming weeks and months, we will continue to update you on our progress with Symbian, Windows Phone and Series 40 and new programs to assist you in building success in Ovi Store. We are excited about working with you in each of these areas. In the meantime, we’ll look for your next great Qt or web app in Ovi Store!

Best regards,
Purnima Kochikar
Vice President, Forum Nokia

“For a long, long time I was simply typing away, and holding down the yellow shift key to get the extended characters and numbers printed in yellow on the keys. Then I discovered that holding down each key for a long keypress automatically gives the extended character. A small touch, but one that made me smile when I found it. Back in the old days, people would read the manuals from cover to cover and find all this out, now it feels like you need to stumble over them by chance. But when you do, it’s like finding a hidden area in a Super Mario game.”