OVI Maps – A Splash In The Desert

After seeing a tweet from Steve Litchfield about a video of Ovi Maps, I had to go take a look.  What I found was actually a very clever video produced by Nokia mentioning the ‘Good Things’ brand as well as showing off the power of OVI Maps (yes even in the desert it seems).

On a personal note, I am a fan of the catchy tune which runs through the video.

What are your thoughts on the video?

Austria Win MiniMob Olympics

Congratulations to Team Austria for winning the WOM World MiniMob Olympics.

Team Austria is formed from

• Grand Duke Roman Schweigler – S60 Inside
• Earl Marco – S60 Inside
• Baron Chris von Stobbs – Nomads Nirvana (honorary Member of Team Austria)
• Lord Markus G. – works for Calista – Mobile Internet Solutions, and is a good Friend!
• Team Captain: Emperor Michael von Hell – yours truly!

And the team mascot

• her Highness, Queen Lid Millet – as the official Mascot for Team Austria

Congratulations to Michael and his team

Nokia Announce The C5

Today sees the unveiling of both a new device, the Nokia C5, and a new naming convention, Nokia Cseries (more on that later). The C5 is a smartphone packed into a feature phone body, boasting S60 3rd edition and a host of messaging and social networking features built in. It also boasts a bright 2.2-inch display and a 3.2-megapixel camera. It also comes packing free walk and drive navigation courtesy of Ovi Maps and is ready for messaging with Nokia Messaging built in.

The Nokia C5 boasts a cool new feature in its phone book, where you can see your friends status updates directly from Facebook. You can also update your Facebook status easily and share your location with Ovi Maps 3.0.

The homescreen will show off your favourite three friends for easy access to calling and messaging whilst Nokia Messaging enables you to keep in touch on IM using Google Talk or Windows Live Messenger.

Storage is the mircoSD variety with support for up to 16GB cards – the Nokia C5 will come with a 2GB card in the box, plenty of room for storing music and with the built in stereo FM radio and 3.5mm AV connector, not to mention the Stereo IHF speaker, it should sound good too.

The device is small too, measuring just over 12mm thin and 46mm across (and 112mm high). Battery life is good for up to 12 hours talktime (GSM) and it’ll stay on standby for a whopping 26 days between charges.

Available in white and warm grey, the Nokia C5 will be available in the second quarter of 2010 globally in Europe, Eurasia, SEAP, China and MEA. The anticipated retail price, before applicable taxes and subsidies is €135.

Nokia X6 Lands On T-Mobile UK And 3UK

Good news for Nokia fans in the UK on either T-Mobile or Three and that is the Nokia X6 is now available and on sale online and within the next few days in local stores too.

The X6 is the new 16GB version and not the original 32GB as it comes without the Nokia service ‘Comes With Music’, however at these prices the X6 should be a big seller.  Expect some hands on photos of the T-Mobile edition by the weekend.

T-Mobile have it on sale with their new price plans which launched in February and are as follows

• £25 a month for 24 months giving 300 Minutes, 300 Texts, Unlimited Internet & A Flexible Booster
• £35 a month for 24 months giving 900 Minutes, 500 Texts, Unlimited Internet & A Flexible Booster

There are other options available like more or less minutes plus 18 month options.

As you can see above, 3 also have the handset on various price plans and these are

• £25 a month for 500 Minutes, Unlimited Texts & Internet over 24 months
• £35 a month for 750 Minutes, Unlimited Texts & Internet over 24 months

Again like T-Mobile there are more plans to choose from including a PAYG option for £299.99

To visit the right page just click the picture of the network you are looking for to be taken straight there.

Booklet 3G, A Bloggers Dream

I wanted to post this as it was well worth saying and sharing with everyone the experience I had this last week with the Nokia Booklet  3G.  I was invited over with CoolSmartPhone to attend Mobile World Congress and blog for Sony Ericsson which was every exciting for me and could have been a disaster if it was not for WOM World coming to my rescue.

I have been laptopless for about  4 months now as I was waiting for the Booklet to come out, WOM emailed me saying my trial period on the Booklet had come to an end and could I email them to arrange a suitable collection date.  I emailed back arranging a date and said I was gutted I missed out by a week taking it to MWC with me and was going to order a basic Netbook to get me through.

To my shock and delight, Katie from WOM World said I don’t need too, I can take the Booklet with me and return it once I get back from Barcelona.  So this past week I have been using a Booklet 3G reporting live from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with my only means of internet access being on a mobile phone and the Booklet.

I have to say the Booklet although not a main computer replacement due to the specs, It was a dream to have a computer with such outstanding battery life, such good build quality and just do exactly what I wanted it too.  Sitting on the train to Liverpool I was using my E72 as a modem over Bluetooth to install apps like Tweetdeck and setup the blog I was in charge off, this was all really easy to do in Windows 7 and I had no worry about battery cutting out, the Booklet felt like it would just not stop going it was like the Duracell battery of the computer world

The main test came though each day at MWC where I had to take lots of video and photo of the stands and publish on the blog, so with the Booklet and a few phones in hand I set off each morning into the event and started to set everything up I needed.

The only time I really needed to use the power cable was when has been using it all day as a charger for a phone over USB (yes it powered my phone too via just a simple USB cable and still had enough battery to last me a good 6-7 hours of being in use.

Putting it as simple as I can, for your everyday blogger, someone who wants to be mobile all the time and keep up with things and for anyone going to a phone event like Mobile World Congress, the Nokia Booklet 3G works like a dream for this and I really do not know where I would have been without it.

Yes it is pricey at £650 for a netbook but the battery life alone impressed the hell out of me and I really enjoyed using it.  This was the ultimate test for me and what I use a Netbook for, and on this test the Booklet passed with flying colours!.

Nokia X10 In The Works?

Engadget have just got hands on a photo and video of what appears to be a new Nokia in the works, called the X10.  The X10 looks to have a 3.2 inch capitative touch screen using AMOLED technology, a  5 megapixel camera and a slide out QWERTY keyboard

So what do you think?.  Is the X10 real and if so would you get one with the specs rumored?

Link: Engadget

Going away!

Just a quick update for everyone, Just to apologies for not posting recently. Im actually going around the World tomorrow for 3 months so had a lot of preparing and sorting things out for that to do, so obviously I will be away for 3 months aswell. I am starting off in Thailand and making my way round, going to Australia, then New Zealand, the Fiji and finishing off in the USA. Im taking my little netbook with me (Not the booklet 3G unfortunately) so I will try and keep everyone updated as often as I can on Facebook and Twitter (twitter username chaslam500), and I’m also taking my N97 with trusty old Ovi Maps on so it will be good to really put it through its paces!

See you all in 3 months!

Nokia Post Q4 Profit Of Approx £988m.

Nokia today announced their Q4 2009 results and the good news is market share of smartphones increased from 35% to 40%.  Rather than bore everyone with the long jargon and company talk, Rafe from All About Symbian covered the results in an easier to understand format which you can find below. All credit to the text goes to Rafe and All About Symbian

Olli-Pekka Kallasuvo, Nokia CEO, said:

“We grew our market share in smartphones in the fourth quarter, driven by the successful launch of new touch and QWERTY models. Our performance in smartphones, combined with continuing success in the emerging markets, helped us increase sales in our Devices & Services unit, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. Our solid results also owe a good deal to world class supply chain management and impressive sales execution.
I was also pleased with Nokia Siemens Networks’ performance in Q4, especially considering the ongoing challenging conditions in the infrastructure market. That performance enabled it to turn in a full year profit on an operative basis. Our focus remains firmly on execution, especially around user experience. Here I want to highlight our move to shake up the navigation market with free walk and drive navigation on our smartphones, a good example of how we are leveraging our assets to bring real benefits to consumers.”

Points of interest

• Nokia mobile device volumes were 126.9 million units, and 12% year on year and up 17% sequentially (not unusual for Q4, which includes the holiday market). This is set against estimated industry volumes of of 329 million units, up 8% year on year and up 14% sequentially. Nokia’s overall (phones) market share was 39%, up 2% from Q4 2008 and up 1% from Q3 2009. Average selling price was EUR 63, down from EUR 71 in Q4 2008 and up from EUR 61 in Q3 2009.
• Services and software net sales were EUR 169 million, up 15% sequentially.
• Converged device shipments (smartphones) were 20.8 million (up from 16.4 million in Q3 2009 and 15.1 million in Q4 2009), of which 4.6 million were Nseries and 6.1 million were Eseries. This means that 10.1 million smartphone shipments were numbered Nokia Symbian devices, reflecting Nokia’s continued strategy of pushing ‘converged’ devices into the mid tier (e.g. the 5530).
• This shows continued growth for Eseries sales driven by the advent of the E52, E55 and E72 mass market availability. Nseries devices sales remain relatively flat and are likely to included around 100,000 N900 (Maemo devices). Numbered devices also showed impressive growth against continuing good sales of the 5800 and the advent of the 5530.
• Converged devices sales were higher than expected, with converged device (smartphone) marketshare up 5% from the previous quarter. Nokia converged devices sales growth has significantly out-grown the rest of the market.
• Estimated global market volume was up to 52.4 million from 47 million, which means that of the 5.4 million extra smartphones sold last quarter 4.4 million were Nokias. However as we’ve mentioned before sequential figures do tend to be quite variable, due to the fact big individual launches can still have an impact on the relatively small smartphone market (52.4 million devices in Q4).

Guess Who Using 40 Booklet 3G’s

Just had an email from the team at wom world with a great idea for a video which feature 40 Nokia booklet 3g’s and 2 of the wom team for a game of guess who featuring the top 40 Nokia websites (world of Nokia included)

Nokia X6 16gb Coming To T-Mobile UK (5230 Too)

T-Mobile UK have a Coming Soon section once again on their official website and on there is the Nokia X6 due into stock in February according to the site.  The interesting part is the memory because on the site it states 16GB or memory but the existing X6 which is only as a ‘Comes With Music’ handset has 32GB of built in memory.

Maybe this is a misprint, maybe this is the talked about new cut down version of the X6 without the Comes With Music service….. we will have to wait until February to find out more information!

UPDATE:  The Nokia 5230 is also listed as Coming Soon

Ovi Maps Announcement: The Reaction

Today came the big news that Nokia have updated OVI Maps to Version 3.3 and this has added FREE (yes that is right FREE) voice navigation for driving and walking in many countries and on a whole range of existing devices.  This is Nokia’s answer to Google Navigation which although was announced a little while back in the 2.0 software update on the Motorola Droid, Navigation is limited to just the USA at the moment where as OVI Maps is worldwide   The list of enabled devices at this time are:

• Nokia X6
• Nokia N97 mini
• E72
• E55
• E52
• Nokia 6730 classic
• Nokia 6710 Navigator
• Nokia 5800

Other devices are due to be added to the list shortly and if you own a device not on the list keep checking OVI Store and nokia.mobi/maps for updates.

OVI Maps is a product that I personally feel is very good but has had a bit of a bad reputation for having it’s fair share of issues, so much so that even myself and Michael Hell from ‘Thoughts From Hell’ were nervous about using OVI Maps when walking the streets of London recently for the WomWorld Nokia Meetup in the head office.

Although that being said I did decide to trust it and OVI Maps did get us from A to B in quick time, free, and this was all on a Nokia N86 which I had been loaned for the day to take photos on for the tour, this was not a fancy sat nav device that cost me money or needed extra’s, it was built into the phone.

Here are the main 5 selling points of OVI Maps which Nokia have included in the press release

1. No hidden costs
The new version of Ovi Maps comes with all the maps and high-end, car grade navigation features you need for free and is yours to keep for the life of the smartphone. No additional licenses needed for extra countries, regions or services like traffic information or city guides. Data charges from network operators may apply.
2. Best global coverage
You take your mobile with you wherever you go in the world so, as standard, voice guided navigation for both pedestrians and drivers is available for 74 countries in 46 different languages and there are maps for over 180 countries. This gives you the best maps with the largest global coverage for free.
3. No network connection required when navigating
Avoid expensive, battery-draining network connections with Nokia’s unique hybrid technology. Maps can be pre-loaded on to your Nokia smartphone so you can set Ovi Maps to offline mode, saving battery power, and the navigation system will still work. This is particularly useful for those worried about data connection costs when travelling abroad or when you are travelling through areas with little or no network coverage.

4. Unique hybrid technology
Ovi Maps is built on an advanced technology called hybrid vector maps. Vector maps are high quality but less data intensive and allow you to continue to navigate even if you lose your network  connection. This means that maps downloaded or updated across a network connection are about half the size of bulky bitmaps used by other mobile map providers. The hybrid technology ensures that, unlike other providers, any downloaded map data is stored on the device for future use.
5. Voice guidance & traffic information
Turn-by-turn, voice guided navigation comes free for both drivers and pedestrians. For drivers this includes lane assistance, traffic information, safety camera and speed warnings. For pedestrians this includes shortcuts through parks and pedestrian-only zones for over 100 cities around the world as well as 6000 3D landmarks in over 200 cities to help you find exactly where you are.

So what are your thoughts on the new free voice navigation on OVI Maps?,  Will you use it more or does this not really matter to you?.  Please discuss below

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