Remember the rumor we saw floating about a few weeks ago about a Nokia N810 refresh? Well, the lads at The Boy Genius Report are reporting — on a rumor mind you — that Nokia is set to launch its N810 refresh with WiMAX at CTIA in April this year. Interestingly, the name will remain the same, and not be labeled the Nokia N830 as we’d first thought. Yeah, it’s only a rumor at this point, but we’re thinking that giving this radio-less internet appliance a bit more reach is nothing but a good thing.
It’s just what you’ve been waiting for — a Nokia N95 running Windows Mobile. It looks like the rumors were true after all! What’s that? This is not a real phone? It’s just an FM radio with a sticker on the screen? Oh bother. Yes folks, thanks to eagle-eyed tipster Eric, you’re looking at the next evolution in gadgetry — the Asaki N95 FM radio. We’re not sure what the going price for this is, but we’d imagine slightly less than $779, though the real N95 doesn’t come with those totally pimped-out headphones, does it?
You know, we’ll actually be a little sad when the endless legal battle between Nokia and Qualcomm actually comes to an end — but until then, we’re going to revel in all the dirt that comes out of having over a dozen simultaneous lawsuits going worldwide. Nokia now says that it owes Qualcomm nothing for its “early” CDMA patents, because it’s dropped a cool billion dollars into license payments for them over the past 15 years and those deals have expired, so it’s in the clear now. As you might expect, Qualcomm disagrees, and says that if Nokia wants to keep using its tech, it’s got to pay up — that’s on top of the estimated $500 million a year Nokia’s already paying Qualcomm for other patents. Guys, guys, why fight like this? What’s a couple billion a year between friends? Video summary of the entire dispute after the break.
Nokia confirmed yesterday that we’d be seeing touch-enabled S60 devices in the second half of the year, which instantly started speculation over what a form the UI might take, as we’ve seen some pretty wild concepts from the Finns in the past. Sadly, however, it looks like touch S60 is going be exactly what the name implies and not a speck more — check out this demo video posted on the Nokia marketing blog. Sure, it’s being demoed off a PC on a touch tablet and anything could change, but we’d say that Nokia’s goal of keeping S60 essentially the same to avoid confusing consumers is a little misplaced — this seems like a terrific opportunity to roll out a sexy new version of S60 with touch at the forefront and re-capture the interest of all those Symbian users, so simply glomming touch onto the existing UI seems like a cop-out. Let’s hope things get a little swoopier when the first devices show up in a few months, eh? Video after the break.
Sorry Microsoft and Apple, you may have had some fancy smartphone sales this year in your cute little American way, but globally there’s no question who’s the real leader in this segment: the Symbian OS shipped on 77.3 million units in 2007. That’s a 50% growth over 2006 sales, with over 141 different phone models from eight licensees. If the new hotness from Nokia this year at MWC is any indication, those numbers aren’t going to go away very soon, but Sony Ericsson’s adoption of Windows Mobile for its flagship XPERIA X1 certainly spells a modicum of trouble for Symbian land. Of course, there are many more low-end Symbian smartphones than there are cheap Windows Mobile phones, and Apple’s iPhone is still a premium product , but the line is becoming increasingly blurred.
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