Omio News Blog

Nokia Tube To Be Released This Year?

Nokia’s ‘Tube’ phone could actually appear in 2008, as the company’s intentions for the future were mentioned by a senior exec.

Dev Kishore is the marketing director for Nokia in India, and revealed much when speaking of their current situation: “We have been working on the Series 60 platform for touchscreen user interface, and a mobile device is expected to be launched by year end.”

Even though he was very careful in naming no names, the Nokia 5800 has been seen around town for many months now and is widely expected to the Finnish company’s keypad-less assault on the industry. Despite the excitement surrounding the phone, some have been underwhelmed by the very familiar look and feel of the interface. It seems very much like Nokia business as usual, which is a tad disappointing given how the iPhone and TouchFLO have revolutionised navigation.

What do you think? Could the Tube bring something new or is it too little too late for Nokia to muscle in on the touch party? Let us know in the forums!

Nokia Slashes Prices, Shakes Up The Market

Just as we predicted last month, Nokia have cut prices on handsets across the board in July, making a tough time even tougher for competitors.

With the tightening of belts in Europe and the US affecting sales of high end mobile phones, the fight for market share has been tougher than ever, leaving many casualties along the way. For the largest manufacturer to reduce prices by as much as 10% on some phones, the others will have to follow suit or be left behind.

The tactics are very clear when the market data is analysed, as the largest drops are on the music and multimedia handsets (the 5610 and N81) in tandem with their launch of the high fashion ‘Supernova‘ phones. Both of these markets are considered the Sony Ericsson heartland, so this aggressive move will make the next quarter very interesting.

With the imminent launch of the ‘Tube’ range of touchscreen phones seen as a response to consumer interest in Apple’s iPhone tech, and the continued success of their entry level devices in emerging markets, Nokia seems to have all bases covered in an effort to retain their 41% market share in the coming months.

How this will affect sales and the industry as a whole is yet to be seen, but a swift response from the rest of the Top 5 (Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola) is inevitable…

Source: Times Online

From Leader To Follower : Nokia Recognises The Game Has Changed

Nokia’s Head of Development Aki Jarvilehto chose this morning’s opening keynote of the game maker’s conference Develop to address the future of mobile gaming, as well as their part in it.

Predicting a €4.2 billion market by 2011, he discussed the presence of new games driven by high production values and ‘disruptive technology’ such as accelerometers, touchscreens, and GPS in particular. He also spoke at length of the frustration that developers faced programming for a range of handsets, and the improvements a more standardised format could offer. Remind you of any phone?

Despite this veiled admission at the iPhone’s overnight dominance in the mobile gaming sector, he also was prepared to reveal his intentions for the future of the format including key target demographics, innovative concepts and even forthcoming titles.

The exciting development was that some of these were cross-platform, meaning a shift to developing for other phones than their own, in an effort to break down the strong position Apple currently enjoys. He also proposed intriguing concepts such as the phone being a surrogate console in emerging markets, with TV-Out allowing it to be hooked up to provide a gaming experience good enough for the big screen.

Also, the admittance of a spec standardisation substantiates with the rumours of the Nokia ‘Tube‘ becoming an entire range spanning the market as opposed to a single model. “Nokia is going to support at all prices points”, he said, adding that the same is true of accelerometers, possibly even magnetometers, and cross-platform functions “which will be shipping in most of our devices”.

However, Aki saw GPS as the paradigm shift in mobile games, taking the portable nature of a handset and imbuing the essence of a game’s functionality in this feature: “We’re looking into concepts that generate content from the city maps we have available. We’re finding ways of making gameplay relevant,” he said, saying such data could be used in a racing game, for instance, to drive a player’s emotional involvement in their game. “This will be one of the game changing things moving forward.”

Exciting times.

Source : Develop

Nokia Tube Makes Dark Knight Cameo?

It seems like the new Nokia touchscreen handset isn’t afraid of the limelight, with a major role in the newest film in the Batman franchise, the Dark Knight.

In one scene, Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman) uses what looks like the Nokia 5800 Tube to perform all manner of cool surveillance-related things, unfortunately the majority of those functions will be confined to the big screen. Don’t want to release any spoilers ahead of release, but suffice to say it looks pretty amazing!

These grainy images from Cellular show the Tube in yet another scene, as we are pretty sure those aren’t Morgan’s dainty fingers…

As for a release date of the real thing, Nokia are definitely planning their assault on the tactile screen market for 2008, so expect some further news regarding this in the coming months. Very exciting gadget news nonetheless, and judging by the rave reviews and Top Ten status on IMDB, looks like the movie isn’t too bad either.

Nokia ‘Tube’ – First Photos and Specs

We mentioned Nokia’s Tube (their iPhone killer) t’other day. It’s Nokia’s first touch device and will be based on the S60 Symbian operating system. It looks a bit like the iPhone, but will have a smaller screen (between 3in and 3.5in)

It’s a quad band mobile phone, supports Bluetooth, uPnP, GPRS, HSDPA, EDGE, WLAN and UMTS. That’s enough to satisfy even the biggest acronym addict. Symbian-Freak says it has a good camera, but not as good as the one that’s in the N-series device. In terms of size, it’s almost exactly the same as the N73 but a bit wider.

Tube probably won’t be released until next year so, for now, we’ll have to ease our pain with a 3G iPhone. Oh, the humanity!

Source: Symbian Freak