MWC 2009 Barcelona – Day 1: Nokia

Feb 17, 2009
Posted in Gadgets, Internet, Mobiles, Nokia, Software

Yesterday saw the start of the 2009 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. A large number of mobile hardware, software and accessory manufacturers gather to show off their wares to the world, it could be considered the mobile telephony version of CES.

Nokia’s conference revealed a number of devices and services for the coming year further improving on offerings from 2008.

The useless Download app on Nokia phones has for a while now been an after-thought for getting applications and utilities to peoples’ phones. It seems there may be a decent solution in the form of the Ovi Store with a url, publish.ovi.com, for anyone wanting to get their content onto the Ovi Store. Signups for developers/publishers is open now with the Ovi Store available to compatible devices in May. The long anticipated N97 will be the first Nokia to have the Ovi Store software pre-installed.

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The Ovi store will also be location aware and as Nokia put it, can provide “…targeted content based on their social connections and physical location.” How this will be useful beyond the given example of Spanish content items when in Spain, remains to be explored. Perhaps those travel/audio guides would be handy.

When it comes to hardware, Nokia devices are universal with handsets available for all budgets and with various capabilities. Yesterday a number of handsets were announced to build on their existing portfolio.

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Nokia wanted to create the worlds thinnest smartphone and why not, what suit-wearing person wants a bulge in their jacket or trouser pocket. In this case, the bulge will only be 9.9mm thick. The Nokia E55 is that handset and claims 28 days of standby time, good if you don’t use your phone, and up to eight hours of talk time. This is the first Nokia handset that I know of to have neither a standard abc, def, keypad or a full qwerty. Instead, the E55 uses what Blackberry users know as SureType, two letters per key in a qwerty fashion. Other features include GPS, digital compass, wi-fi and in this thin handset, a 3.5mm headphone jack. The handset will be available in March, this year, for €265 sim-free, available in Black, Aluminium and White Aluminium.

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Also announced was the Nokia E75, another E-series business smartphone with standard corporate email access and the first to come integrated with Nokia Messaging. It has a horizontal slide-out fully qwerty keyboard. The handset will be available next month for €375 sim-free in Silver/black, Red and Copper Yellow.
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Nokia’s Navigator range of handsets are reinforced with the addition of the 6710 Navigator, which comes with a Nokia Maps and navigation licences pre-installed so the device is ready to use. The 6710 Navigator is a vertical slider handset which will also come with a car holder and is expected to be around €300 sim-free; available during Q3 2009 in Titanium and Brown.

The Nokia 6720 Classic was also announced, a candybar smartphone running S60 9.2. It is what I would consider, a common/standard-level smartphone, with 5MP camera and LED flash (LED!…*groan*), TV-out connection and built-in GPS. It has nothing exceptional that hasn’t been seen on previous top end N-series handsets and it probably serves to bring the technology to more people as prices drop. Available in Titanium, Grey and Brown for around €245 in Q2 2009.

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N86 is Nokia’s answer to the megapixel race (and hopefully the image quality race too!) at 8mp, it has exceeded their stale 5MP barrier. Is this new 8MP vertical slide handset going to be the new standard for this and next year’s Nokias?

Claims of aperture akin to that of a dedicated digital camera and shorter latency and fast mechanical shutter aim this squarely at the multimedia and photography demographic. No Xenon flash, instead there are two LEDs With all the features one would expect of an N-series device, such as wi-fi, 3g, GPS, TV-out along with 8GB of built-in storage and additional Micro-SD card slot. the N86 also features an OLED screen providing better contrast and colours, important for a phone where the photographic capability is being touted. Expect it to be available Q2 2009 €375 sim-free.

tags: MWC 2009, mobile world congress, conference, Nokia, Navigator, ovi, store, n86, 6720 classic, 6710 navigator, e75, e55, n97, barcelona