My Nokia Blog

Now before you say anything about the uneven base, you’ve got to know there’s some function behind it. (Thanks for the heads up Keith!)

As described in the blurb,

“The Nokia Kinetic is a magical mobile phone that makes receiving a call, text, or email more playful by converting digital information into kinetic movement”

Basically, for incoming notification, the phone will spontaneously stand up.

It’s a 2009 design so still features the classic mini usb port. So glad pretty much everything’s gone micro. Remember the fuss when moving away from Mini USB and how all our cables were mini? Anyway, off topic.

It is a very playful design, it reminds me of that egg toy that lies down and bobs back up. The blurb continues to say this is intended for business users – which based on their general conservative tones will probably not appreciate that J-LO inspired bottom.

The front face however, and if the phone was univorm slim all over, would look quite beautiful, no? It’s kinda N81ish, now iPhone 4ish. I love how the bottom swoops around to the back instead of having a full sandwich effect.

Something a little like below (although could be more tastefully done with more time and skills :p)

Via JeremyInnesHopkins via thedesignblog

You can see the video below:

This is a cool App where users can download the ‘diary’ from the ovi store and share Messages and IM with friends via a proposed diary which I think is a cool way of doing it. This is just proposed concept and I don’t know if this will be released, IMO I hope it does get released it is a very cool concept for staying n touch with friends and family.

[via ZOMGitsCJ]

Tomi Ahonen is a Mobile consultant for handset manufacturers and is a really respected man with a good amount of knowledge  and of course I follow him on Twitter. Today he made some very interesting comments on Nokia and their success in making camera phones.  Its no secret that Nokia are in a sort of trouble regarding their position of the world’s largest with Samsung breathing down their necks a lot of people have been suggesting that Nokia don’t innovate. Well I disagree Nokia does innovate but at a much slower pace and in places that people might find not that important. One area is camera and I have an interesting proposition or an idea or whatever you want to call it.

Read more…

Via pestaola.gr and designer @kalevgr, we have a Nokia X9 – a concept phone based on the X6 but with several new welcome features:

• 720p HD recording
• Quad-LED
• HDMI out
• Capacitive Multitouch screen
• This is most interesting: AMOLED screen buttons underneath
• DUAL MINI (not micro) USB – so the X9 can function as a USB hub

Call/End buttons - Quickly make a call. Always something present in Nokia phones and I've missed this in the N900

Note how they’re not just buttons, they tell you how many new messages/tweets and facebook messages.

The menu button is also interesting. It’s contextual. One tap to homescreen, swipe down to unlock, swipe up to control social networks without opening main screen. Maemo /MeeGo device definitely needs this.

I like the idea of a secondary “gesture area” like the Pre. But instead of being LED lights, we could have a full blown screen. I wanted something like this since the N95 – I always hoped the always present music buttons could alternatively morph into gaming buttons/camera buttons when appropriate (they kinda do with the N85 by changing backlighting).

pestaola.gr

Nokia N920 Concept

This was just a 20 minute MS Paint job I did a while back. I have NO skill in photo editing, as is evident in the images – it is just a raw idea.

The AIM was not to design a phone, but to show that within a given (compact) space, you can have a decent 4 Row configuration keyboard that Nokia seems rather averse to making. The name is not important either, it’s just something to refer to.

There is obviously no “out of the box” thinking – it is just a very standard QWERTY which took literally just 2 minutes to put together. The only difference for me is that this was designed from the keyboard first then the rest of the phone grew around it. After all, if you’re getting a phone with a QWERTY keyboard, you’d want a lot of focus on an optimized configuration.

• It’s shorter than the N97, and of similar width.
• Within that space we have a 4-row keyboard:
  • Dedicated Numbers Row
  • A more traditional offset QWERTY configuration
  • I haven’t included secondary symbols on all keys – that can be decided later whether they are needed and if so where they should be.
  • Basic punctuation is easy to get to. Full Stop, Comma, Apostrophe can all be reached by one button press.
  • Two shift buttons, left and right to get the secondary key
  • Space bar located in the middle.
  • Menu button
  • Standard Symbols button for additional symbols on touch screen
  • There’s a trackball instead of a D-Pad or a 4-way arrow keys.
  • The keys will not be flat. I have an extremely basic grasp of MS paint as it is.  They’d perhaps be similar to the N900
• The keys are slightly larger than the Nokia N97′s
• The entire keyboard occupies just over half of the given space – so the connection between the slide is still very solid, and also gives the option to increase the key size even further.
• This can be stretched to the same length as the N97 to increase the size of the screen and space for the keys.
• Other design faults perhaps in the shape/screen is not the focus here. It’s the fact that
• Like the HTC Touch Pro2, the keys can be reconfigured around. ie. forgoe an actual row yet again so that the QWERTY part is uninterrupted – have the numbers in traditional alphanumeric alignment over the QWERTY keys.
• Since this “N920 concept” is shorter than the N97, I guess it could be elongated to include a D-pad. Since it could have the same gaming capabilities as the N900, a D-pad may actually prove useful in this concept. Or some kind of flat joystick to optimize space.

Other Feature’s the N920 concept would have?

• Screen around 3.5″ – At least 384k pixel res in some ratio.
• N86′s 8MP camera – with shutter/gallery/cam-vid button
• N82′s Xenon flash (perhaps even N86′s Dual LED?)
• N900′s processor/RAM/Graphics card
• N97′s battery
• Capacitive Oled
• N95′s stereo speakers
• Any buttons on the phone, sensors/camera aren’t visible. Buttons, if any can just light up when applicable. Perhaps dedicated music controls or a gesture area?

I haven’t designed the back nor the sides, because frankly I can’t and don’t want to.

I do have intentions that it will be slim, and any ports/buttons will be flush/hidden with doors, except the 3.5mm jack

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If I had 3D skills I’d so try and make a concept phone that looked slightly convincing. We’ve already seen how a concept device was cloned and manufactured by our favourite Chinese Rip-off artists.

Back in April, there were some rumours on an upcoming E-series swivel phone with QWERTY. The image on the left was a of a mock-up based on BGR sources’ first hand impression.

Hideous was the first word to pop into my mind. Next were horrendous monstrosity. But then again, it is just a mock-up. The actual leaked photos of the Nokia N900/Rover/RX-51 looked completely different and utterly beautiful compared to Mobile Crunch’s render (when closed anyway). Was there hope for the same in this swivel QWERTY?

All we could do was wait for Nokia to announce it or leak some pics.

Well, Chinese knock-offs have got there first. We shouldn’t be surprised in clones appearing before the original even had confirmation of existing – the same people that brought us the NokLa E97 (simply based on a concept design by Fabien Nauroy) has produced the NokLa E81.

Admittedly, this 90 degree QWERTY swivel phone doesn’t look half bad. It’s petite and quite feminine looking, especially with that mirror thing going on. Plus the owner could probably wear it as a necklace (just put a chain through the swivel hole), not to mention that there’s something girly about being a swivel form factor (ha, or maybe it’s just because the last swivel was the effeminate 7373?)

UPDATE 24-08-09: This maybe the Nokia 7705 – Check out more details via The Nokia Blog or BGR

The actual swivel qwerty from Nokia is rumoured to running only S40.

M8Cool via JustAMP via Engadget

UPDATE: This maybe the Nokia 7705 – Check out more details via The Nokia Blog

We’ve seen how with the S60 application, Handwave, users can take advantage of the front camera to convert hand gestures into basic navigation of phone  controls.

What if you can turn all your hand gestures into something that your phone can recognise? Produce a square with your thumbs and pointer fingers to frame and capture a picture? What about turning anything into a display, your hand, blank sheets of paper, a potato, all controlled by your phone?

Worn around your neck, the latest device of the SixthSense project uses a camera to detect hand/finger gestures, (much like handwave, just a lot more complex) and a mini projector to display content. This means that everything that you can shine the projector on becomes an interactive display and your hands don’t have to physically touch the phone to let it know you’re going to do something.

That’s the essense of the SixthSense project. To create a device that instinctively knows, “where the user is, what the user is doing, and who the user is interacting with.” says Dr Pattie Maes, head of the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT, creators of the latest prototype of SixthSense .

Imagine going grocery shopping, picking up an item and your phone creates a display on that item, telling you what that it is, what it does, how much it is. Imagine you were in a bookstore – you may get to have reviews about that book, and price comparisons in other stores – all without ever having to tell your phone to search for this item as it knows intuitively what it is, and what you want it to do about that item.

It sounds like a great concept. Although the SixthSense team do not think their platform will replace smartphones/laptops, the intuitiveness to anticipate what it is you want to do could do so much to enhance the growing trend for natural hand gestures to control our electronic devices.

The adaptable “be anywhere” screen is great – but isn’t so much for taking photos . What if you’re zooming or adding effects, your eyes cannot see what’s happening because an image cannot be projected into the empty space between your hands.

What if they use some discreet glasses. When they make everything small enough, this could house the camera for the sensor, a screen so you can have a display (terminator style) for things only you want to see (text/emails) and also a projector when you want to share what it is that you can see with others. Heck, why not have it all in a contact lens. :p

The most important thing I’m taking away from all of this is how devices can “anticipate” what you want to do. No wading through menus, however intuitive they may be. The buttonless phone, once laugable, is now more than quite acceptable. Is it ever possible to see phones without menus? Or at least some radical change into the paradigm of heirarchical menus to something more fluid, with gestures that can instinctively work out what you’re looking for/want to do.

This BBC article contains a video demonstration of the latest prototype with more more details on further applications such as converting sign language gestures into speech and gaming.

A long while ago, I once thought that the ultimate stage of the mobile phone would be the complete integration with the human body, via the use of nanotechnology. No physical handset; screenless integrated vision through your eyes, biosensing of health and mood and features controlled by thought. Perhaps that was one to many Sci-Fi shows watched then huh?

But even at the speed that nanotechnology is growing at, I’d be hard pressed to see that level of advancement in my lifetime.

However, Cambridge University and Nokia Research Center feel that perhaps nanotech could be the way to go in the future of mobilephones. This concept video shows the versatility of Morph. Fold it, bend it, wear it; it’s super dirt replant and can even ‘smell’ things. I’m not sure what exactly I’d be using the latter feature for. Perfume buying for events such as this Sunday’s mother’s day? (I haven’t got anything yet…)

Prices start at $1,000,000 and will ship next quarter. J/k.

Since it’s just a concept video, they should have pushed on the features. Apart from charging by illumination what about by movement? Or molding to any shape, i.e. something gaming friendly should N-gage still be alive by then.

Reading some of the vdeo comments, I find it a little funny how some iPhone haters are already crowning this phone as it’s like “the only way Nokia can really attract the iPhone crowd is with a phone we won’t see for a long long time”.