Nokia Lumia 920 and the tale of déjà vu

Exactly a year ago, thanks to the lovely team at Nokia Connects I've had an opportunity to trial the Nokia Lumia 800 - the first Nokia-designed smartphone running the Windows Phone operating system. Putting all ramblings whether Nokia's sudden strategy switch was right or not, the Lumia 800 impressed me, however not to the point where I'd be ready to ditch Android in favour of WP7 just yet.

Fast-forward 12 months and I find myself with the latest top dog from Nokia's Windows Phone range in my hands, the Lumia 920. Again, kudos to Nokia Connects for letting me have it.

Impressions from MWC 2012 a.k.a. "This Is My Next"

Although I'm self-proclaimed mobile gadgets maniac, somehow I don't usually follow major events in the industry as closely as someone could think. However, since I consider getting a new smartphone to replace my current HTC Desire Z sometime soon'ish, I was keeping an extra eye on the recent happenings in Barcelona where Mobile World Congress took place.

Nokia Lumia 800 review

So here it is, the Nokia Lumia 800 - the first real Windows Phone phone made by Nokia. I've had virtually no experience with Windows Phone 7 before and was looking very much forward to receive Lumia 800 from Nokia Connects (as usual, thanks!) to find out whether WP7 is able to impress me as much as Nokia N9 and MeeGo Harmattan did recently. Frankly, I actually doubted WP7 could stand up to expectations set so high by Harmattan but having solid hands-on experience with both now, I might revise my stance a little bit after all. Let's see...

Nokia N9 - review of the disruptive device

Nokia N9 is very weird kind of beast. It is running MeeGo Harmattan OS and has been released after so-called elopocalypse when Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop has announced quite sudden and controversial turn towards Windows Phone platform, ditching both homegrown smartphone platforms - Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo - into gloom. Nonetheless, Nokia N9 has received positive reviews from mobile technology blogosphere around the world, which posed the question whether pivotal turn in Nokia's strategy was actually right move? As a former user and fan of Maemo-powered devices, including the latest N900, and also being quite sceptical about Microsoft partnership, I was particularly interested to see N9 myself. Once again, thanks to Nokia Connects I've had a chance to use N9 for past couple of weeks and see how it performs in real life.

Nokia X7 review

This is no secret that Nokia is currently undergoing the toughest times in their recent history. Stephen Elop announced sudden switch in strategy which essentially converts Nokia into mere hardware manufacturer for Windows Phone based smartphones. However unpopular that decision was, and no matter how upset people (and stocks) became, we all just need to deal with it. Period.

Nonetheless, since that announcement was made, things at Espoo are getting just worse. Shipments of WP-powered mobiles won't happen immediately, so Nokia has to fill the gap somehow to remain relevant, and that emergency plumbing is done with help of ill-fated Symbian smartphones.

The most recent launches in Symbian territory which were supposed to keep Nokia on track are business-oriented E6 and multimedia-powerhorse X7. I have had a chance to review E6 already and my feelings were quite positive, despite the fact Symbian is no longer attracting me enough to dump Android altogether. Now, once again thanks to WOMWorld/Nokia people I've got X7 in my hands to play with for couple of weeks.

Nokia E6 review, part 2

Having already reviewed Nokia E6 from visual and hardware perspective, I could compare it to the beautiful woman walking down the street and passing you by. She's absolute stunner and you can't resist to turn head around and take extra peek at her. Yet, you wonder how is she like personally? Is she really worthwhile? Or maybe she's just looking good?

Second part of my review is to see whether good-looking and having certain hardware virtues Nokia E6 will be also able to impress from inside. Is Anna - an inspiring name of the latest iteration of Symbian - really worthwhile? Does it have strengths, what are the weaknesses? Or perhaps she's just having a nice name? Let's dive in and see.

Nokia E6 review, part 1

About two-three years ago I was a happy user of Nokia's one of the most successful business smartphones in recent years and that was Nokia E71. In fact, I regarded E71 as my truly perfect device at the time - compact, lightweight, feature-packed yet still sporting full qwerty keyboard in my favourite form-factor. However, time was passing by, various different mobile phones have been landing in my hands since then and I've recently settled down with Android-based HTC Desire Z as my default phone. Yet still Nokia E71 will always be the kind of device I will keep the greatest sentiments about.

So despite making different mobile phone choices recently, once I've learned about the latest Nokia E6 smartphone back in April this year, I've got quite excited again. And now, just before Nokia E6 hits the shelves in the UK, thanks to WOMWorld/Nokia I've got a chance to try it out for couple of weeks. Having said that, the main question today is whether Nokia E6 will live up to expectations of Nokia E71/72 owners/fans and keep up with successful business smartphone series from Nokia? Let's see.

Nokia X7, E6 and Symbian Anna - first impressions

Thanks to the great people at WOMWorld/Nokia (as usual lately ;), I have been lucky enough to get my hands on the latest and greatest Nokia offerings in Symbian world - the new Nokia X7 and E6 which were officially unveiled to the world yesterday morning.

Demonstration was carried out in WOMWorld's headquarters in London by Nokia product managers. They brought few prototype devices to show off and give us to play with. So what are the first impressions?

Changing Android's UI default font

I've been recently tipped by haerwu about Font Changer app for rooted Android devices that lets you change Android's user interface default font. I gave it a try and I must say different font makes huge impact on UI "sexiness". See yourself below.

Nokia BH-905i headphones review

For the past couple of weeks, thanks to great folks at WOMWorldNokia I've had chance to use Nokia BH-905i headphones. That was utterly interesting experience and there's one thing I can say straight away - these are one of the best gadgets I've had in my hands recently! Read on to find out why.

Nokia N8 two weeks hands-on review

Nokia's latest multimedia flagship has been in my hands for almost two weeks now so I've got more thoughts to share about this device in addition to the very first impressions that I posted right on the day when I've got N8.

Firstly, I think any Nokia N8 review has to be split into two parts, describing separately hardware and software aspects of this smartphone. That is because in particular case of N8 it's somewhat difficult to judge it as a whole. Let me explain that further later on.

Nokia's towel has been thrown - sad but true

So it happened. Mr Elop decided to make financial geeks happy (hmm, apparently not) and disappoint all devoted Nokia fans at the same time by announcing "strategic partnership" with Microsoft.

What struck me today in the morning, once such bold announcement has been made, is that no earlier than few months ago Mr Elop has been quite positive about future of Nokia in context of MeeGo in one of the interviews he gave. What had to happen in-between to suddenly make him claim Nokia as "burning platform" and need to "join an ecosystem" remains unclear. Yet I suspect his Microsoft roots had some influence here but we'll never know.

Nonetheless, this is it. We will now have MicroNokia (or better NoSoft) with Windows Phone OS rather than MeeGo.

Nokia N8 is in da hauz!

So I'm lucky! Once again I have been given a brand new mobile phone free! This time thanks to Social Media Week event sponsored by Nokia and related Twitter promo action by folks at @WOMWorldNokia, shiny silver Nokia N8 has landed in my hands. :) Many thanks!

In fact I am double lucky, as I was quite fancy to get N8 in my hands pretty much since it has been released. Not necessarily to have it (as it doesn't have hardware qwerty keyboard, for starters) but to get to know it and see how the latest incarnation of Symbian OS works out. Both N8 and S^3 have been receiving mixed press since the release and I feel it was mostly negative. That alone made me more eager to see it myself. Plus, I am looking very forward to see how N8's famous camera performs.

Joining an ecosystem is like throwing a towel, really

There have been a lot of speculation and rumours since Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop has chipped in his famous line "[Nokia] must build, catalyse or join a competitive ecosystem". One of the latest and apparently "credible" rumour is that Nokia and Microsoft are going to join forces, leading Nokia to start offering Windows Phone 7 powered devices under their brand, possibly ditching their own platform(s) instead.

Let's say that is actually going to happen and Nokia will really "join a competitive ecosystem". Regardless if it will be WP7 or perhaps Android, it would definitely mean that Nokia will simply become a mainstream follower rather than loosing-but-striking-back innovator. This would be extremely disappointing and effectively would be understood as "sorry people, we surrender and adopt whatever is already on the market just to survive".

C'mon Nokia, you have far too much potential and power at hand to become yet another "MeToo" mass maker of WP7/Android devices just like HTC, Samsung, Huawei, ZTE and zillion others. You can do better than that. You have created a smartphone back a decade ago in the first place, for God's sake! Don't become the victim of own success but win that success back by brilliant and genuine smarthphones that would leave people breathless. That's surely nothing easy nowadays, yet everyone knows that you really are capable of doing that, Nokia.

As I'm not an industry expert, nor the financial analyst and that's all only my wishful thinking really, so I am not going to elaborate on that more than necessary, yet the closer we're getting to the magical date of 11th of February when all would suddenly become clear, the more worrying rumours appear all around the net and suggest the recent Nokia's promising push towards brand new mobile OS (MeeGo) and development (Qt) platforms is doomed anyway.

Let's hope all these crazy gossips are simply not true and Mr Elop would not disappoint his old and faithful Nokia fans.

5mpix camera shoot-out: HTC Desire Z vs. Nokia N900 vs. Nokia E72

I've been taking quite a lot of photos with Nokia N900 earlier and even if I didn't regard their quality as the best ever, these shots were just fine and perfectly acceptable for less important occasions to me. However, ever since I've got HTC Desire Z in my hands, I was quite baffled with its camera quality. Main thought was along the lines of is this really that bad or is it just bad impression?

So I went and did totally non-scientific and hugely subjective comparison of camera capabilities of the most modern mobile devices I currently have at hand: HTC Desire Z, Nokia N900 and Nokia E72, all of which have 5 megapixel camera sensors. Results were, frankly, quite surprising to me.

Nokia N900 vs. HTC Desire Z

So it happened - after almost a year spent with Nokia N900 as a default phone, I have now switched to Android in the form of HTC Desire Z. Being long-standing user and fan of Maemo (since N8x0), immediate switch to whole new platform naturally brings incentive for direct comparison, so here it is.

Android makes me cry

I have been using Nokia N900 as a primary mobile phone for nearly a year now and I am quite happy with it. However, quite recently I've also bought the best value-for-money Android 2.1 device you can currenly get, which is Orange San Francisco aka ZTE Blade. I won't go in too much details about the phone itself, as anyone could easily look it up, but if you're after joining Android world cheaply, yet without much (any?) compromise in hardware area, then ZTE Blade is definitely way to go. Anyway, I have never intended new phone to replace my N900 because of lack of hardware qwerty keyboard which I'm very addicted to, nonetheless I gave it a shot and put my main SIM card into it for few days. That experience made me cry and I'm just about to tell you why...

Quick review of cheap, dedicated car holder for N900

When I've got myself a Nokia N810 couple of years ago, I was nicely surprised by very good quality car holder that came inside the retail box as standard. When I've got myself a Nokia N900 last December, there was no car holder inside the box. Even worse - Nokia didn't seem to care providing one as an optional accessory to buy later. They still don't seem to care, anyway.

Getting started with QtWRT

Recently announced Qt Web Runtime (QtWRT) is a perfect opportunity to energize masses of people out there in the wild with at least bare html/css/javascript awareness to become application developers for their Maemo and probably future MeeGo devices. However, since QtWRT is still pretty much in pre-alpha stage, it has been thrown at us with no proper documentation (not counting few external W3C references), so early adopters might scratch their head upon simple "Hello World" tutorial that would kick-start the general idea behind Web Runtime.

Disabling smiley icons in Conversations (PR1.2)

If you're one of those old-school geeks who simply can't stand these quasi-cool, graphical equivalents of good old, ascii-based smileys (aka emoticons like ":-)" or ";)"), this tip is going to make your day. Conversations app which manages all sorts of text and IM messages in your N900 is using graphical smileys by default, yet the new and shiny PR1.2 release brings much anticipated ability to hack those weird icons and bring some old ascii love back to N900 near you.