Is AT&T seriously gearing up to sell a subsidized Nokia smartphone once again in the US of A? Given the company’s long absence from being included in any US carrier’s smartphone section, it still feels more like a dream than an impending reality, but that image above is certainly hard to ignore. According to Pocketnow‘s sources, the first press images of the Nokia X7 are legitimate, and the AT&T branding isn’t by accident. Purportedly, the Symbian^3-based phone will be hitting Ma Bell’s shops as early as this month, bringing along an eight megapixel camera (with dual-flash), four speaker grilles (two of which have drivers underneath) and a ClearBlack display. Hit the source link for a look at the rear.
Update: Our dreams have been dashed by Pocketnow, who says its original source was out of date — AT&T had apparently planned to stock the X7 under the name “Nokia Journey” in time for a Mobile World Congress launch, but those plans have reportedly been canceled by AT&T itself.
There’s no need to tell you that a lot was (and still is, in a way) riding on Nokia’s N8. It was said to be the outfit’s first dead-serious smartphone to rival the giants of today, and it was also Nokia’s first chance to truly reveal Symbian^3 to the world. We’ve already churned out our two pennies on the matter, but for those of you who bought in, now’s the time to get really real. Are you satisfied with where Nokia’s going with the N8? Do you seriously see a long and lively future when looking at Symbian^3? If someone (read: UPS) accidentally delivered the keys to the Finnish kingdom to you, how would you go about tweaking and / or reshaping the N8? Would you have selected a different operating system? Added a few more hardware buttons? Thrown in a different processor? Made it available on your carrier of choice? Let us know down in comments below, and keep it sensible — it’s Christmas Eve and all.
You know what’s awesome? Versions of Skype’s mobile app that don’t arbitrarily restrict you to WiFi networks. If you’re in the US, you won’t find such an app on Android devices — but you will find it on Symbian, where the company has just released a re-upped build with new features and support for more phones. Specifically, the N8, C7, and E5 are all in the mix now, along with access to Skype’s new SILK codec that offers a potent combo higher voice quality and improved bandwidth efficiency. It’s also got a tweaked UI along with better contact and profile management — so yeah, if you’re a Symbian user, odds are very good you’re going to want to grab this.
If Intel prognosticated correctly, context is the future of apps — your device’s array of sensors will determine where you are and what you’re doing, and clever programs will guess from there. Problems arise, however, when one tries to run those accelerometers, microphones, radio antennas and GPS tracking devices constantly on the battery life of an average smartphone and determine what the raw data means, and that’s where a group of Dartmouth researchers (and one Nokia scholar) are trying to stake their claim. They’ve got a bundle of algorithms called Jigsaw for iPhone and Symbian that claims to be able to continually report what you’re up to (whether walking, running, cycling or driving) no matter where you place your device, and only pings the sensors as needed based on how active you are. (For better or for worse, Jigsaw also dodges the privacy concerns Intel’s cloud-based API might raise by storing all personal data on the phone.)
Of course, we’ve had a very basic version of context-aware functionality for years in apps like Locale for Android and GPS-Action for Symbian — which modifies your smartphone settings under very specific conditions you specify. Now, Espoo’s doing much the same with an app called Nokia Situations. Presently in the experimental stage, Situations is a long ways away from the potential of frameworks like Jigsaw, but here you won’t have to wait — you can download a beta for Symbian^3, S60 5th Edition and S60 3.2 at our source links without further delay.
Firstly, let’s be absolutely clear that we don’t know this is Nokia’s X7, but given the polished, entertainment-centric design (it has four speakers, apparently), we’re inclined to believe that it’s the real deal. Its screen looks to be the same 4-inch affair as on Nokia’s E7, it’s running the latest Symbian OS (formerly known as Symbian^3), and pictures of its rear reveal an 8 megapixel camera. The last detail of import, naturally, is the reassurance that comes from knowing that this supposed X7 can crunch through Need for Speed quite nicely. Jump past the break to see it on video.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Update: The video’s been thrown into private mode pretty quickly. Let us know if you find any copies of it floating about the interwebs.
Update 2: Thanks to the lightning-fast gang at Mobile Bulgaria, we’ve got a new copy of the video up past the break. We’ve also spotted that this handset has four homescreens rather than the three available on currently released Symbian handsets. A newer version of the software? Might well be.
In our inevitable Utopian future (assuming we make it past this 2012 noise), we’ll all use one frequency for our high-speed wireless broadband across the globe. Actually, we’ll probably just beam information directly between our brains and brain-like supercomputers at speeds so fast they can’t be measured, and we won’t need smartphones at all because they’ll be installed in our bodies at birth, complete with eyeballs capable of 1080p video capture. Until then, though, we’ve got companies like Nokia showing some hustle to put pentaband 3G radios on the market, and the trend continues with the upcoming E7. Of course, we already knew it was going to be pentaband — Nokia had said as much — but seeing it in the cold, hard graphs and tables of an FCC filing is still music to our ears. Won’t be long now, folks.
We can imagine that the wait’s been an excruciating one for wannabe E7 owners who’ve been restraining themselves from buying an N8 instead… but the good news is that the wait isn’t that much longer. Nokia has announced on Twitter today that the 4-inch tilting QWERTY handset — a phone Espoo has labeled the true successor to the storied Communicator series — will start shipping out on the 10th of next month, though exact availability dates and times will undoubtedly vary a bit from market to market. The company has been quick to note that today’s wild Symbian Foundation news has no effect on the existing range of Symbian^3 devices being launched as we close out the year, so the question is: who’s buying?
Update: Nokia just clarified that it meant December 2010, not the 10th of December in its tweet.
One of the Symbian^3 devices introduced at Nokia World not long ago, the midrange C6-01 is now shipping around the world in quite literal terms: “the boxes have been filled, the vans loaded and the factory gates opened,” to use Nokia’s verbiage. Interestingly, we left Nokia World with the impression that this was the sleeper of the range — a less-expensive model with a great display and extremely solid (read: metal) construction that should make this a good choice for the Symbian faithful looking for an upgrade option that saves a few dollars (or euros, as the case may be). No word on specific availability by country, but we’d imagine you could start pestering your local retailer right about now.
One of the Symbian^3 devices introduced at Nokia World not long ago, the midrange C6-01 is now shipping around the world in quite literal terms: “the boxes have been filled, the vans loaded and the factory gates opened,” to use Nokia’s verbiage. Interestingly, we left Nokia World with the impression that this was the sleeper of the range — a less-expensive model with a great display and extremely solid (read: metal) construction that should make this a good choice for the Symbian faithful looking for an upgrade option that saves a few dollars (or euros, as the case may be). No word on specific availability by country, but we’d imagine you could start pestering your local retailer right about now.
Things are turning upside down in Espoo today. Besides, earnings and reported job cuts of some 1,800 employees, Nokia also announced that it’ll be streamlining its development strategy to unify environments for Symbian and MeeGo. Nokia’s new approach calls for the adoption of Qt, and only Qt, as its application development framework from today onward. Here’s what that means for new N8 owners:
You can buy a Nokia smartphone confident that any improvements introduced later to the Symbian platform, such as the user interface, can be made available to download on your device as well. No need to wait for Symbian^4 – the improvements we were planning for Symbian^4 will be introduced as and when they become available. In fact, we will no longer be talking about Symbian^3 or Symbian^4 at all – it will be one constantly evolving and constantly improving platform.
Sounds like a smart move to us. After all, it’s Symbian’s UI, and not the OS, that we have the most trouble with — an issue that Nokia readily concedes. So the faster they can improve it — even pieces of it in a continuous evolution of the experience — the better. Nokia also announced support for HTML5 web content and applications for the Symbian and MeeGo platforms in both Qt and the browser. Click through for the press release and to hear Rich Green, Nokia CTO, discuss the new strategy.
