GigaOM » phones

Review: Nokia N8 Is Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 19:41:47 +0000

Nokia’s newest smartphone comes in the form of the Nokia N8, a GSM touchscreen device with the brand new Symbian^3 operating system. Even with the improvements shown in the N8, several key user experience aspects keep it at least a step or two behind the competition.

Modu T Sets Record for Lightest Touch Phone

James Kendrick — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:26:09 +0000

Smartphone maker Modu has won the Guinness World Record for producing the lightest touch phone. The Modu T is a tiny (2.2-inch) phone that is the core of the company’s modular phone system. Modu phones slip into a variety of “jackets” that turn the phone into a gadget aimed at serving different purposes. There are jackets that turn the Modu T into a camera, exercise phone, audio player and a texting phone.

The company claims the Modu T will be coming to market soon, but have supplied no details where and when. We first covered the Modu phone system earlier this year when ASUS was reported to be working on a netbook that used a Modu phone for connectivity. That netbook has not come to market yet.

The Modu T phone is based on the BREW platform, and has a touch screen and 3G connectivity. It’s a fully functioning phone on its own, but requires one of the jackets to gain many of the functions associated with smartphones of today. The company is reported to be working on an Android version of the Modu phone for release in the future.

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T-Mobile’s Newest MyTouch Gains Video Calls, Android 2.2

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 04:01:29 +0000

T-Mobile is releasing new phones in waves: just as the new G2 is appearing in stores, the carrier announced an updated myTouch running Android 2.2. This new model uses a second-generation CPU and also offers video calling on either Wi-Fi or T-Mobile's speedy mobile broadband network.

Nokia Ovi Store Gets 2.3 M Downloads Daily

James Kendrick — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 20:35:26 +0000

When thoughts turn toward the big app stores, Apple’s iTunes store and the Android Market come to mind. We really should include Nokia in that list, as the Ovi Store is currently seeing 2.3 million downloads per day. That may be due to the 200,000 new customers that are signing up daily at the store.

Though Nokia currently has a small presence in the U.S., the Ovi Store does business in 190 countries. The company may be poised to enter the U.S. market in a big way, so it will soon be even bigger. Nokia customers are already downloading more apps daily than Research in Motion’s BlackBerry customers.

The Ovi ecosystem is not just apps, with Ovi Maps, Ovi Chat, Ovi Mail and Ovi Music. Ovi Music has 11 million tracks up for sale globally, and Nokia claims it has 17 million active Chat and Mail accounts. Ovi Maps now provides navigation service in 78 countries.

Having such an international presence helps all the Ovi businesses — especially the app store. In a recent interview with Nokia, the company claimed that developers reap 18 to 22 percent increased sales when apps are available in localized languages. Nokia is in a better position than most companies to take advantage of this phenomenon.

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N8 Delayed: Is Nokia Too Big to Be Nimble?

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:39:08 +0000

Nokia’s N8 smartphone is slightly delayed, as customers are now expecting the Symbian^3 device to arrive in October while Nokia “makes amends.” The situation illustrates that managing expectations for a near-global audience may be a bigger a challenge for Nokia than developing competitive products and services.

One Phone to Serve All: Is Galaxy Samsung’s iPhone?

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:00:38 +0000

Samsung’s Galaxy S is headed to the big three carriers in China, which gives the company a realistic shot at selling 10 million Galaxy S handsets by the end of 2010. How is Samsung able to shoot for large sales numbers? It’s taking an Apple approach.

3 Features To Expect In the New HSPA+ T-Mobile G2

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:24:02 +0000

T-Mobile continues to tease us with the first handset that can take full advantage of the carrier’s 21 Mbps mobile broadband network, today introducing the G2 handset. Unfortunately, without any handset details — other than support for the fast HSPA+ network speeds — we officially know nothing more about the upcoming G2. For now, we have a name and a generic handset rendering that looks more like a bar of soap than anything else. So what might the G2 shape up to be?

Given that the original G1 was made by HTC, which now makes some of the best Android handsets around, it’s a safe bet that the G2 is another HTC device. If that’s true, we can glean quite a bit of information. HTC has turned to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon CPU to power high-end Android phones, so an HTC-made G2 would probably offer the same. Although Qualcomm has dual core, faster processors coming down the pike, it’s either too early for a faster chip in the G2, or the phone gets a faster processor and doesn’t launch until year-end. My gut says the phone arrives in the next month or so and comes with the now-standard 1 GHz Snapdragon chip.

Support for T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network tells us about the phone capabilities as well. Speedy mobile broadband is great for all activities, but it provides the most bang for buck with large files, such as those used to transport media. Based on my hands-on testing of an HSPA+ data stick, I’m expecting real world download speeds on the G2 to approach 10 Mbps in a best-case scenario. That’s ideal for both streaming video and pulling down media files, but what’s the point of such an advantage if the consumption device is limited to a small screen? The G2 ought to offer a screen size of at least four inches in diagonal for media consumption over the HSPA+ network. Another reason for a large display is the competition. Based on support for a faster mobile broadband network, T-Mobile’s G2 will be going head to head with Sprint’s 4G handsets: the EVO (see our review here) and the Epic, both of which offer displays of four inches or better.

HSPA+ isn’t all about the downloads though; it provides reasonably fast upload speeds as well. Activities like sending email, updating social networks or basic web surfing work just fine on today’s 3G networks, so what does HSPA+ bring to the table when it comes to uploads? Again, there’s a big benefit when it comes to media, only this time it’s for media creating and sharing. A faster upload pipe will make it easier for G2 owners to shoot larger video files up to the cloud or live-stream as needed. For that reason, it won’t surprise me to see high-definition, 720p video recording on the G2, which again is becoming common on higher-end smartphones today. A front-facing video camera isn’t beyond the realm of possibilities either, because video chat is another benefactor of a faster wireless network.

T-Mobile might be playing coy with the G2 details, but by touting the phone as the first handset with HSPA+ support, the handset’s capabilities offer some reasonable expectations. Once the phone specifications become official, we’ll see how close — or how off-base — my educated guesses are.

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Trill Brings Twitter to the Nokia Platform

James Kendrick — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:30:17 +0000

Trill, a full-featured Twitter app for the Symbian S60 platform, is now available for free in the Ovi Store. Trill is a rich app designed by Spice Labs for phones lacking a touch interface so users can still keep track of their friends and contacts on the go.

Spice optimized all the Twitter functions for easy use on Symbian phones. Users can do everything on Twitter with ease, including updating timelines, tracking tags, marking favorites and tweeting. For those on the Nokia platform, it’s probably worth giving Trill a try considering it’s free.

There are a few other Twitter apps for Symbian which are worth checking out, too. Twim is a lightweight Java-based app that will work on most phones. Those looking for a fuller Twitter experience can check out Twibble. The interface is customizable and users can do most everything in Twitter with Twibble. Both of these apps are free for non-commercial use.

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Android Owners Love Free Apps

James Kendrick — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 19:24:13 +0000

Smartphone owners love free apps, but none as much as those toting Android phones, according to new data from Distimo. Approximately 25 percent of apps downloaded across all smartphone platforms were free apps with the exception of Android, where a whopping 57 percent of the apps grabbed were free. The Dutch analytics company finds that games are the most popular apps across all platforms — 90 percent of the most popular free apps and 80 percent of the most popular paid apps.

Twitter is still a popular social network for the Apple and Android crowds according to the new numbers. The official Twitter app was recently released for both the iPhone and the Android platforms, and quickly moved up the chart of the most popular free apps. It has already captured the number 10 spot on the iPhone free app list and number 6 on the Android chart.

Amazon only recently released an Android version of its Kindle reader app, but it has been out for the iPad since that device’s launch date. Apple has its own iBooks reader app on the iPad, and the numbers indicate it is kicking Amazon’s Kindle app to the curb with iBooks. Both reader apps are on the ten most popular apps list, but iBooks is in the top position and the Kindle app has the bottom spot. That disparity is somewhat surprising given how long the Amazon Kindle market has been in business compared to Apple’s new iBookstore. Most likely it reflects how hard Apple is pushing iPad owners to install the iBooks app.

Distimo’s look at the top 100 grossing applications on each platform points to the money-making opportunities the Apple App Store provides to developers. The average app price for both the iPhone and iPad top grossing apps was almost double that of the other phone platforms. The top 100 grossing apps on the iPhone were higher priced than those on the iPad; they averaged a smooth 36 percent higher average price than the top grossing iPad apps. Of course the iPhone apps have a bigger head start than the iPad apps, given how short a time the iPad has been on the market.

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LG Opens App Store for Feature Phones and Smartphones

James Kendrick — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:09:11 +0000

Consumer electronics giant LG Electronics is not going to sit on the sidelines and watch all the app stores whiz by. The company has opened an app store aimed at crossing the divide separating the lowly feature phone from the smartphone. The new store opened with 3,000 applications on the shelves, with plans of hitting 4,000 this year. Half of the apps will target feature phones, a market that has been largely ignored by app stores. LG is a big provider of feature phones globally, so this store is an attempt to reach its core customer while trying to cash in on the popularity of app stores.

The new store is available in 33 countries, but there are a few missing. It is not accessible from the U.S. or Canada, at least it won’t let me in as it only lists two countries in the Americas — Brazil and Mexico.