Nokia Connection 2011

This year Nokia Connection 2011 took place within CommunicAsia 2011 itself and it is the first time it is being held at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Stephen Elop, CEO, Nokia was also in town to give the opening keynote. The main highlight of Nokia Connection 2011 was the Nokia N9. Other minor ones include Symbian Anna will be coming in August 2011, new dual SIM phones like the C2-03, C2-06, new single SIM phone like the C2-02, Nokia Browser, Nokia Life Tools, Maps for Series 40, Nokia Play 360 and Nokia Wireless Music Receiver MD-310.

Nokia N9

Nokia N9 is running on MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan (finally). It is powered by ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP3630 1 GHz and PowerVR SGX530. It has a whopping 1GB of RAM and comes with either 16GB or 64GB of storage space. It’s screen is a 3.9″ WVGA (854×480) AMOLED display with curved Gorilla glass, no air gap, anti-glare polarizer. It’s body is made up of one piece polycarbonate and comes in three colors (black, magenta and cyan).

The camera of the Nokia N9 is a 8MP auto-focus Carl Zeiss with wide-angle lens and large lens aperture of f/2.2 and comes with 2x LED flash.

The Nokia N9 also comes with NFC which in the demo, they used it to pair with speakers (brilliant idea) by just tapping your Nokia N9 on the speakers instead of pairing it with Bluetooth. Of course the music is stream via Bluetooth once it has been paired by NFC.

There are only 3 buttons in N9, Volume Up, Volume Down and Power/Standby Button. There is no “home button” on the Nokia N9, to wake up the N9, just double tap the screen when in standby mode.

All the menus and mutiltasking features are access via swiping. You swipe to get to the “Applications” screen, you swipe again to get to the “Multitasking” screen and if you swipe again, you will get to the “Events” (think Notifications) screen.

Despite it being a prototype unit for the demo set, the UI is extremely fast, responsive and intuitive. I am an iPhone 4 user and it only took me 15 minutes to get the hang of the UI. The Nokia N9 is a good phone, but I wonder how long before it gets replaced by a Nokia’s Windows Phone 7.

I think the Nokia N9 is a stepping phone for the consumers to transit into a Nokia’s Windows Phone 7 with regards to the UI as most of WP7 UI are swiping left and right which is very similar to the Nokia N9.

Did I mentioned that the Nokia N9 will be using MicroSIM? Apple is no longer alone in this MicroSIM bandwagon!

The Nokia N9 will be available later this year and it will cost about US$660 for the 16GB variant and US$749 for 64GB variant.

I took quite a number of pictures of the Nokia N9 (including the main apps of Nokia N9) and uploaded them to my Flickr Set: Nokia Connection 2011. You can check them out or view them in the Flash slideshow below.

Specification:

Networks: Pentaband WCDMA 850, 900, 1900, 1700, 2100, Quad band GSM/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900
Speed: HSDPA Cat10: 14.4Mbps, HSUPA: Cat6 5.76Mbps
Display: 3.9″ WVGA (854×480) AMOLED display with curved Gorilla glass, no air gap, anti-glare polarizer
OS: MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan
Memory: 1024MB RAM, 16GB/64GB storage
Camera: 8Mpix auto-focus Carl Zeiss, wide-angle lens, 2x LED flash, Video capturing MPEG-4 SP 720p @ 30fps, 2nd camera for video calls
Size / Weight: 116.45 mm x 61.2 mm x 7.6–12.1 mm (L x W x T)/ 76 cm3/ 135 g
Connectivity: BT 2.1, GPS, A-GPS, WLAN 802.11abgn, NFC, 3.5mm AV connector, uUSB connector, USB charging
Processor:ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP3630 1 Ghz, PowerVR SGX530
Audio: MP3 player, Audio jack: 3.5mm, Supported codecs: mp3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, FLAC
Battery: 1450 mAh
Talk time: (GSM/WCDMA) up to 11 h / up to 7 hours
Standby time: Up to 450 hours (WCDMA), up to 380 hours (GSM)
Video playback (720P): up to 4.5 hours
Music playback: up to 50 hours

Official Site: Nokia N9
Symbian Anna

Symbian Anna will ship as an update to existing Symbian^3 phones like the Nokia N8 in August 2011. New Symbian^3 phones like the Nokia N8 sold in July 2011 onwards will include Symbian Anna as well.

Nokia C2-02/C2-03/C2-06

The Nokia C2-03 is the first “Touch and Type” dual SIM phones to feature easy swapping of 2nd SIM card. Nokia C2-02 is the single SIM version of C2-03. Nokia C2-06 is the Nokia C2-03 but with clean and smooth finish and come in colors such as Graphite, Golden Buff and Lilac but it will only be available in selected markets like India, China, Eurasia and Brazil. I think this whole Nokia C2 series is extremely confusing.

The estimated retail price of the Nokia C2-02 and C2-03 is approximately €75 (US$105) and for the Nokia C2-06 it is €80 (US$112).

Official Site: Nokia C2-02
Official Site: Nokia C2-03
Official Site: Nokia C2-06

Nokia Browser

Nokia Browser is essentially Nokia’s version of Opera Mini.

Features:

Data compression saves time and moneyfor consumers by speeding up page downloads, and is more efficient for operators by reducing over the air traffic on bandwidth constrained networks.
Makes favorite content easy to find with locally relevant information, the latest highlights and a list of popular web content that matters to you.
Web apps take the Internet and optimize it for your phone, making the content easy to see and use.
Makes the mobile web familiar by presenting country or operator specific start screens.

It also supports web apps:

Series 40 web apps are a new and optimized way users can access their favorite Web content on their Series 40 phones. Web Tools for Series 40 makes it quick and easy to create web applications.
Through web apps for Series 40 phones, developers can now access a much wider consumer base for their applications, driving even more revenue opportunities.

Nokia Browser for Series 40 is available in 87 languages and Nokia C2-02, Nokia C2-03 and Nokia C2-06 will come pre-installed with it.

Nokia Life Tools

Nokia Life Tools is designed to address information gaps so that consumers in emerging societies can be better informed and improve their livelihood, with targeted services for Healthcare, Agriculture, Entertainment and Education.

Agriculture: Plan ahead, be more productive and make the most of the market with the weather forecast information, agriculture tips & techniques and regular updates of local market prices of seeds, fertilisers and pesticides.
Education: Improve your general knowledge and English through educational services delivered directly to mobile devices in your own language to boost your confidence.
Healthcare: Improve your health and get to know more about motherhood and childcare, health & fitness and diseases.
Entertainment: Personalise your phone with the latest ringtones, stay entertained with trivia such as jokes and check your astrological predictions with a daily astrology service.

A large selection of Nokia Series 30 and Series 40 devices offer the Nokia Life Tools services. Device compatibility is country specific. For example in Indonesia, the language available will be Bahasa Indonesia, all the 4 categories (Education, Agriculture, Entertainment and Healthcare) will be available and all GSM operators (Telkomsel, Indosat,XL, Hutch (3) and Axis) supports it.

Maps for Series 40

1 liner to describe this, Nokia Maps is now also available for Series 40 mobile phones.

Features:

Find your route, search and explore exciting places around the world.
No download or installation needed: market relevant street maps and places shipped with the device.
Low usage cost: search and plan your route offline and at zero cost.
Broad reach: network-based positioning, no GPS required.
SMS-based location sharing.
Easy-to-use home screen to access all key features with one touch.

Nokia Play 360

The Nokia Play 360 is a speaker that supports NFC and Bluetooth. Nokia has done an excellent job in using the NFC in the Nokia N9 to pair it with an NFC speaker and once it is paired, the sounds is stream via Bluetooth. Pairing is so simple using NFC as compared to Bluetooth. Just tap your Nokia N9 onto the top of the speaker and it is paired almost instantly and now the music can be stream wirelessly via Bluetooth.

Features:

Loud and clear: 360 audio with deep bass and crisp details. Wireless stereo with two speakers.
Party speaker: works with any device, yours and theirs. Bluetooth/3.5mm and NFC.
Portable: 20+ hour play time with a rechargeable battery. Premium aluminum build for light weight.

Official Site: Nokia Play 360

Nokia Wireless Music Receiver MD-310

The MD-310 is a wireless music receiver that comes with NFC and Bluetooth as well. You can play music from your phone, laptop or any other Bluetooth device on your home stereo, wirelessly and with high audio quality.

Features: