SISAREA

Nokia’s Symbian^3 flagship — the 3.5-inch N8 with 12 megapixel camera — just went up for pre-order on Espoo’s Italian storefront showing an end of September availabilty. Now before you get up in arms about the €469 price tag (about $610), remember, the €370 estimated retail price announced was pre tax and pre carrier subsidy. That’s just how Europe does things, deal with it. We’re not seeing the preorder available elsewhere but we’ll update you if that situation changes.

[Thanks, Faisal]

Nokia N8 up for official €469 pre-order in Italy, available in September originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We knew it was coming, and now it’s official: Rogers Wireless has today launched its entry-level “chatr” wireless brand for Canadians everywhere — and by “everywhere,” we mean Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa (Montreal is coming soon, as is possibly elsewhere). Two plans are available: $45 monthly for unlimited talk-and-text and $35 for unlimited talk and 50 free texts. As of now, the official website’s showing four devices to choose from, available at full price only (no subsidizing). On the low end, relatively speaking, there’s the Nokia 1661 candybar for $60, followed by the LG GB125R flip for $75, the Nokia 2680 portrait QWERTY slider for $95, and Samsung’s Gravity landscape QWERTY slider sitting at the top of the chain for $130. Rogers — whose name appears nowhere in Chatr’s branding so far — expects “hundreds” of chatr kiosks to be rolled out at Future Shops, Best Buys, Costcos, and other retail outlets.

The brand will compete with other budget-conscious options from the likes of Wind Mobile and Mobilicity, but this one’s got the advantage of Rogers’ more established, wider-reaching network. According to The Globe and Mail and CBC News, Wind will be offering a whopping $150 credit for those who switch to its network from Rogers / chatr. Mobilicity’s chairman John Bitove has a different strategy altogether, threatening to complain to the Competition Bureau that Rogers’ possible goal here is to drive other discount phone brands out of business before dissolving chatr and leaving the market with only a higher-priced segment. And if you were wondering where Telus and Bell Mobility stand, well, both companies are reportedly expected to follow suit with entry-level brands of their own. Data plan-averse Canadians should have quite the selection from which to choose.

Rogers’ budget-friendly chatr brand launches in Canada originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s getting to the point where it’s not terribly easy to keep track of all the in-car entertainment initiatives our wondrous connected future has in store, but here’s two names you’ll want to remember: GENIVI and MeeGo. The former is an industry alliance that now includes automakers GM, BMW, Hyundai and Peugeot Citroen alongside the likes of ARM, NVIDIA, Nokia and Intel, and MeeGo is the Linux-based OS that they’ve just decided will soon be powering our cars. Don’t expect this to affect your daily drive anytime soon, but in the long run we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the Moblin-Maemo base underpins future revisions of Terminal Mode and OnStar.

MeeGo becomes infotainment operating system of choice for BMW, GM, Hyundai and more originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you recall, a few days ago we stumbled upon a cheekily-named concept app (which has since been renamed for obvious reasons) from Adobe that does video-calling on Android. This is pretty rad considering it’s just Qik and Fring offering the same service for the green bot right now, so we trotted along to Adobe’s London office to get a closer look at this demo. As with many things in life, not all went as planned as you can see after the break — the video stream froze up on several occasions, but then again Adobe’s Mark Doherty only spent three days cooking this simple app. Regardless, this should still help Android developers understand the beefed-up peer-to-peer capabilities in the forthcoming Air 2.5 runtime, which is now “feature-complete” and undergoing extensive testing ahead of launch later this year.

Things are less positive for Flash availability on other mobile platforms, though. While Nokia’s just waiting for a Linux SDK before it can start porting Flash apps to its devices within 2010, Adobe implied that it’s still waiting for two other vendors to respond — Palm’s already been shown a Flash build running on webOS devices, and it’s just a matter of the company signing up for Adobe’s device certification system; RIM, on the other hand, is a bit more vague, but we were told it’s definitely interested in both Air and Flash. And here’s the surprise of the day: no comment on Flash for iOS (not to be confused with its digital publishing tools for the iPad), but there’s no stopping you from hacking it in yourself.

Update: Adobe’s Mark Doherty has sent us a statement to emphasize the industrial backing of the Air and Flash platforms for mobile. We’ve posted it after the break.

Continue reading Adobe Air peer-to-peer video call concept Android app hands-on (video)

Adobe Air peer-to-peer video call concept Android app hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia Kinetic concept revealed in prototype form originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was already a man in a hot seat and these latest numbers will do little to lower the temperature. Nokia’s net profit for Q2 2010 was €221 million, which most companies would be happy with were it not for the fact that this company pulled in €380 million in the same quarter last year — and that’s with 2009, as Nokia’s own report indicates, representing an economically tougher environment. Average selling prices for Nokia handsets used to be €64 back then, which dipped to €62 in the first quarter of this year, and is now at €61. Nokia says this has been caused by price pressures, “particularly in certain high-end smartphones,” and though the change may appear small, a Euro’s difference tends to be amplified when you’re shifting upwards of 111 million units each trimester. For his part, OPK has said that the speculation about him being replaced isn’t doing Nokia any good and he’s determined that it “must be brought to an end one way or another.” Guess we better keep an eye on this one then.

Nokia quarterly profits drop 40 percent year-on-year as CEO says speculation must end ‘one way or another’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/Apple_shows_Nokia_s_N97_Mini_can_be_force_choked_too’; Nokia claims it always prioritizes antenna performance over physical design, and we’ll take them at their word, but that apparently didn’t exempt one Espoo handset from Apple’s grip of doom. Here’s the Nokia N97 Mini going down for the count, from a full seven bars to two. Of course, Apple doesn’t mention whether calls or data drop when the handset’s held this way. Video after the break.

[Thanks, Lyndon W.]

Continue reading Apple shows Nokia’s N97 Mini can be force choked, too (video)

Apple shows Nokia’s N97 Mini can be force choked, too (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It doesn’t come as a complete surprise, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting (care of “people familiar with the matter”) that the search is on for a new Nokia CEO to replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Investor confidence and falling stock prices are to blame as the company has had — and we’re being nice here — great difficulty competing in the smartphone market against the likes of Apple and Google. Espoo isn’t commenting on the matter (yet), but we’ll keep you up to date. Better start updating that resume now, dear reader.

Nokia looking for new CEO to replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, says WSJ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia Kinetic concept offers some ideas Nokia might want to heed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia’s looking to ride the mojo of any negative fallout from today’s Apple press conference, slipping out a rather fascinating statement this afternoon. The gist of it is that Espoo’s keen on letting everyone know how much blood, sweat, and tears they’ve poured into perfecting their antenna design strategy over the years, going so far as to say that they “prioritize” it over the physical design of the phone if they need to in order to optimize its call performance — an opinion moderately different from the “we want to have our cake and eat it too” philosophy espoused by Jobs today. In closing, Nokia acknowledges that a “tight grip” can mess with the performance, though they say they’ve done a bunch of research on the ways their phones are typically held so that the antennas are placed optimally. Interestingly, there was a stink not long ago about the severe signal degradation some E71 users were seeing when they placed their hands on the lower rear of the phone — but you can’t win ‘em all, we suppose. Follow the break for the full statement.

Continue reading Nokia: ‘we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict’

Nokia: ‘we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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