The 11 big announcements at Nokia World 2010
Nokia World 2010 had been seriously hyped this year, so we were expecting some pretty big announcements. And there was indeed some pretty impressive things on display. Was it enough, though, to meet the needs of the mobile public? Have Nokia developed amazing phones that will silence its critics and have us all drooling with envy and willing to throw our iPones and Androids onto a burning Finnish fire?
Well, let’s have a look, with this run-down of the 5 big announcements made at Nokia World 2010
The 11 big announcements (in no particular order!)
1. This is the start of Nokia’s fightback
Niklas Savander continued the fighting theme with several digs at Apple, and a bold claim that Nokia will ship 50,000,000 new Symbian smartphones (i.e. the N8, E7, C7 and C6) in 2011.
2. Nokia have shipped over 350 million Symbian phones
3. New Symbian and Qt developer platform announced
Nokia’s Qt provides a developer’s platform that rests on top of all Nokia’s devices, so you can write an app using Qt, and it will run on all Nokia’s Symbian phones.
4. Nokia N8’s camera is the best camera in a phone ever
Carl Zeiss optics, manual shutter technology, 12 megapixels, xenon flash and a host of other features make the N8 the best camera phone in the world – just don’t call it a camera phone (Anssi was very insistent we didn’t call it that, as it apparently wouldn’t do the phone justice!)
5. Nokia N8 is a super-multi-tasker
Vanjoki showed off his N8 with 25 apps running simultaneously.
6. Nokia N8 has a built-in graphics accelerator
7. Nokia C6 uses unique new CBD technology – Clear Black Display
The new Nokia C6 is another new Symbian touchscreen smartphone with a new screen that uses Nokia’s new Clear Black Display technology. This provides a much clearer display, as the background is “blacker than black” thanks to the way Nokia has altered the polarizer beneath the screen.
This removes the reflections from the screen, ensuring that the blacks you see really are just that – black – which in turn enhances the contrast of the display and makes the whole screen much easier to see.
It’ll be interesting to see how this compares with Apple’s Retina display and Samsung’s Super AMOLED display.
8. Nokia E7 Communicator reads and edits Microsoft documents
Vanjoki described the new E7 Communicator as
“…an office on the go. It contains industry-leading prodcutivity apps for easy handling of documents, including reading and editing Microsft Office documents.”
9. Enhanced Office apps coming soon thanks to increased collaboration with Microsoft
Vanjoki discussed the E7’s ability to read and edit Microsoft documents, and ended by saying
“…it will be fully upgradeable as we add even more features through our cooperation with Microsoft and that should somehow now be easier…!”
10. E7 is capable of showing Tron at 720p
The N8’s not the only phone capable of showing Tron at 720p on a huge screen – the Nokia E7 can do it too! Look:
11. Nokia is the leader in navigation – not Google
Nokia are clearly annoyed that Google’s had all the attention as far as mapping is concerned, but you can understand why: Nokia spent $8 billion buying mapping company Navteq to corner the market in mobile navigation, only to watch as Google made its existing Google Maps and Google Earth services fully mobile and gave it away for free on any phone that could run Java apps.
Worse, Google followed that with its own navigational software that can give turn by turn navigation, which forced Nokia to do the same after Google pioneered it.
Oh, and Google’s Maps are actually faster to render and easier to share than Nokia’s Ovi Maps. But don’t tell Nokia that. Just remember that Ovi Maps features pedestrian navigation and has no need for a mobile connection, as you can load the maps on your phone.
So, pedestrian navigation eh? Well, that’s $8 billion well spent!
Conclusion
Are they really the 11 big announcements from Nokia World 2010?
Well, I wrote copious notes from the keynotes. My memory’s not the best, so I wrote them using the glorious LiveScribe pen, which records the audio at the same time, so I’ve gone back and relistened to them again and again. And yes, I’m afraid to say, they really are not just the 11 biggest announcements that were made, but the only announcements that were made!
Anssi sounded angry, agressive even, and that was good. For a moment we believed that Nokia really was about to fight back.
But then he made the comment about increased collaboration with Microsoft, he reminded us all that this was his last ever talk for the company as he’s just quit, and there was a distinct lack of anything from MeeGo, and we realised that all we had to go on was the N8 and E7; two great phones, but like the rest of Nokia World itself, no indication of Nokia’s future.
