Nokia N78 Hits American Shores (Not Stores)
We’ve got a quick little ditty for you: the Nokia N78 is now available in the good old US of A. It will only set high rollers back $560 while it will set chumps back a whopping $560 (see what we did there?).
Remember, that $560 is an unsubsidized price that isn’t tied to any service agreement with a carrier. Carphone Warehouse in Europe is selling the phone with service in that region for about $40 with a 2 year contract. For some reason, no American MNO’s have picked up the phone.
Soooo… you can grab your Nokia N78 online or at one of their two flagship stores in NYC or Chicago.
[Via Gizmodo]
Nokia Tube Inches Closer to Reality
A German promotional poster brandishing 5 Nokia Handsets has been leaked and 4 out of the 5 handsets have already been officially confirmed by Nokia. The 5th? The Nokia XpressMusic 5800, affectionately referred to as the “Tube”.
The naming is a little peculiar: up to now we’ve seen this device come with the tag XpressMedia and not XpressMusic. There hasn’t been much substance to the “Tube” name rumors but it would have made a great deal of sense with the “Media” moniker, improving on the “Music” line of handsets.
What gives, Nokia? We’re guessing we won’t have to wait long to find out since the Nokia 5200, Nokia 6600 (slide), Nokia 6210 (Navigator) and Nokia E71 have already gotten their marching orders. Could it be a matter of days?
By the way, for those wondering, the translated text from German to English of the poster headline? The New Playmaker.
[Via Unwired View]
Nokia Tube Resurfaces
Remember those rumors of a touch screen Nokia handset we heard about a few months back called the Nokia Tube?
Apparently the iPhone 3G announcement and nearby Samsung Instinct launch have awoken the Tube from its slumber, along with a couple other Nokia handsets (N79, N85). With the premiere N-Series phone - the N96 - already lined up, we’re not so much infatuated with the N79 and N85 scoops.
But this Nokia Tube thing… we want more. Here are a few new pictures of what is claimed to be the Nokia Tube:
A couple things that are noteworthy in the pics:
- The Stylus! When your fingers aren’t precise enough, I guess you’re supposed to use this. Wired.com points out that stylus’ are pretty much pointless, but we’d have to strongly disagree. Handwriting anybody? Doodling on photos? Come on… the new mobile apps coming out could put this to GREAT use.
- Vodafone branded, so it will likely come out on Vodafone in Europe first… and HOPEFULLY it will make its way to the states. But since we don’t even know if the phone is real yet, thats jumping to conclusions a bit.
- Fits into the XpressMedia line of Nokia Phones (although not illustrated in the pictures, it is thought to be the Nokia 5800)
- The back side of the phone shows the Carl Zeiss branded 3.2 MP camera, which lends itself to other released info leaks pointing to the Nokia Tube.
The Nokia Tube! Sounds cheesy at first… but it could grow on us. Plus, you could call it the Nokia Junk or Nokia Garbage- as long as the phone kicks butt we don’t really care.
By the way, these pictures were dug up from a Flickr Photostream from an account that has since been deleted. We’re not sure what that says about the authenticity of the pics and rumors, but we thought we’d let you know!
[Via TalkAboutNSeries & Crave]
GPS for Rednecks, Courtesty of Nokia
For the directionally challenged, GPS Navigation Systems can be as coveted as cell phones. And with the proliferation of Mobile technology, where your cell phone is your GPS, there is rarely an excuse to ask, “Where the hell am I and how did I end up here?” Or is there… ?
Try out a little experiment. Get lost, purposefully, in the middle of some rural area. Ask for directions somewhere (anywhere) and you’ll likely get a response that sounds something like this:
“Alright yur gunna wunna go straight to the top of that there hill and turn right. Stay straight until you pass two red barns on the left and then yur gunna see Johnsonville pond right thur on yur right. Take a left right there and go straight until you see the biggest oak tree you ever did see and you’ll be about one acre away from the market.”
Thats right folks…
It may sound strange but in some places street signs and road names are not the currency of driving (or walking, or horseback) directions. Apparently, Nokia feels their pain. Dr. Kari Pulli of the Nokia Research Center explains:
“The instructions are based totally on real world pictures, not on synthetic maps,” he says. “We started developing the landmark mode when we realized that people read maps in different ways depending on things such as cultural background and gender.”
For the politically correct interpretation of this article, you can check Venture Beat, where we initially discovered Nokia’s new culture friendly mapping system.
With all due respect, the technology DOES have some great potential depending on how it is developed. In actuality, it sounds like a technology that would work incredibly well on the Android platform. The technology was originally suggested by a Nokia research group in India where landmark based directional advice is more commonly sought.
In any case, this is definitely something to watch as the technology has a lot more potential than providing dumbed down directions to country bumpkins, as we initially suggest. Sorry… we couldn’t resist!
NokiaTube… the next iPhone Competitor
News of the next iPhone killer competitor came by way of Nokia with one source laughing off the 4 million units Apple has sold: “We’ve done that [volume] since we’ve had dinner on Friday.”
A bold statement indeed and an interesting name to boot. Sure, it’s just a codename but many of the codenames end up becoming the name and we wouldn’t be surprised if this one sticks. The iPhone is so darn generic as a word but so brandable since attributed to Apple. Google owns YouTube and the Put-Word-HereTUBE.com seems like a trend that won’t soon go away.
If Nokia is smart, though, they’ll try to find a name of their own. After all, if the piggybacking starts with the name it will give Apple Fanboys a pretty good argument that the device was an iClone from the start.
To tell you the truth, if the handset is as slick some are suggesting it might be, we could care less about the name or how much it copies the iPhone. Why try to reinvent the wheel? If something works extremely well, take its best qualities, build on its success with some unique ideas and call it your own. That’s the way it works folks.
Anssi Vanjoki - Nokia’s Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia - would agree, “If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride.”
Here is a quick video of the mobile in mention: