Quick Takes: Nokia's culture, RIM's interface, and living in the paradigm of engineers

This post is an experiment.  I sometimes run across information that I think is worth sharing, but that doesn't fit into my usual publishing tools.  Generally it'll be something too complicated to tweet, but too simple for one of my usual long blog posts.  I've decided to try compiling those tidbits into an occasional post, which I call "Quick Takes."

Please let me know if you find this useful.

This time I want to talk about the aftermath of the Nokia-Microsoft deal, Android on BlackBerry, wireless insecurity, and WikiLeaks as a model for the future of human society.


More aftershocks from the Nokia-Microsoft deal

In the flood of commentary about Nokia's deal with Microsoft, I ran across three items with interesting perspectives on the deal.  They helped me understand how much work Nokia still needs to do.  If you're interested in the deal, or just in organizational change, I think they're worth checking out...

The engineering-driven culture.  Adam Greenfield, a former Nokia employee, discussed Nokia's culture and explained how it produces wonderful mobile phone devices but poor user experiences (link).  The key sentence:

The value-engineering mindset that’s so crucial to profitability as a commodity trader is fatal as a purveyor of experiences.

When I've written in the past that Nokia needs to learn how to do real product management, this is what I was trying to say.

This is how it feels to have an alliance dumped on you.  Meanwhile, if you want to get a sense of how corporate alliances get built, check out Engadget's interview with Aaron Woodman of Microsoft (link).  Aaron is a Microsoft spokesman and a key player in the Windows Phone team, so you might expect him to know chapter and verse about the plans for the alliance with Nokia.  But he doesn't, and you can feel his discomfort as Engadget tries to pin him down on some details:

Q:  There will be no preferential treatment given to Nokia in terms of the level of customization that they can apply to their devices. Is that correct, or no?
A: So it's an interesting question -- you say, like, preferential treatment, so say more about that. Is that like oh, they can modify...

The reality is that a big corporate alliance is created from the top down.  Senior management negotiates the broad outlines, and then announces the deal (because it's material to both companies and has to be announced to prevent insider trading).  Then the mid-level employees have to painstakingly work out what the agreement actually means.  I believe that's happening as you read this, and that process will probably continue for some months.  Meanwhile, Aaron can't answer most of Engadget's questions because the answers don't yet exist.  I give him a lot of credit for not trying to make up something to make himself sound better.

Anyway, if you see some vagueness from Microsoft and Nokia in the next few months, don't be alarmed.  It's how these things are done.

When is an installed base not an installed base?  I've been delighted to watch the rise of Horace Dediu, a former Nokia employee who has built himself a huge online following through very cogent analysis of Apple, and now the overall mobile market.  Although I usually find myself agreeing with everything he says, I thought he was a bit off base in some recent commentary about Nokia (link).

Dediu plotted the installed base of every mobile platform, and pointed out that Symbian has a far larger installed base than any other mobile platform.  He said Nokia has decided to throw away that installed base:

The disposal of such a large installed base must count among the largest divestitures in technology history and, when coupled with the adoption of the least-tested alternative as a replacement, elevates platform risk-taking to a new level. It may seem bold, but there is a fine line between courage and recklessness.

If all of those Symbian users understood that Symbian was their OS, had purchased applications for it, and felt that Symbian added value to their devices, then Nokia would indeed be taking a huge risk.  But virtually the only people who were even aware of Symbian were the people reading and writing blogs about the mobile industry.

Try this -- go look at a typical Nokia Symbian phone.  What is the brand you see on it?  Start the software, launch some apps.  Do you see the word "Symbian" displayed prominently?

Have you ever seen an ad for Symbian?  A billboard perhaps, or a big glossy ad on the back cover of the Economist?

Maybe a teensy little text ad inside the Economist?  Anything?

Indeed not.  Because Nokia didn't want the name Symbian to be prominent.  Heck, it didn't even let Symbian create its own user interface, let alone advertise its brand.  Nokia made Symbian into anonymous plumbing, because Nokia wanted Nokia to be the brand that users bought.  And considering how things worked out, that was something the company did right.

When I was at Palm and we surveyed mobile phone users, we asked Symbian users what OS was on their phones.  Most of them had no idea.  Among the minority who said they knew what their OS was, more of them thought it was Windows than knew it was Symbian.

Let me say that again, more Symbian users thought they were using Windows than knew they were using Symbian.  I guarantee that hasn't changed in the years since we did our surveys.

So, if Nokia executes its marketing properly, it should be able to flip most Symbian users to Windows Phone easily.  Just grin, tell them it's the cool new Nokia smartphone, and move on.  In that vein, the riskiest thing Nokia has done in the past couple of weeks is play up its deal with Microsoft.  It would have been better to play it down, so Nokia customers wouldn't get a message of disruption.

But I doubt most of them are listening anyway.

If there's anything reckless in the Nokia-Microsoft deal, it's the huge number of things that both companies need to execute very well in order to make it work.  But I think there's nothing reckless about the basic idea of ditching Symbian.


Android apps on BlackBerry?

There have been persistent rumors that RIM is trying to get software that will let its PlayBook tablet run Android apps (link).  Now there's some evidence that they may be looking to do the same on BlackBerry phones as well (link).  This seems like a reasonable thing to do, but I'm astounded that they're only working on it now.  The time to plan the app platform for your tablet is when you're creating the software for it, about a year before it ships.  It's not the sort of thing you dink around with a couple of months before shipment.  And you especially don't tell the public about it right before the hardware launches -- all that does is undercut any chance you had of getting native app development on your platform.


Wireless isn't secure (duh)

This isn't news if you've been paying attention.  For years the security companies have been telling us that wireless networks (especially wifi) can easily be snooped.  I'm not sure why the wireless insecurity story has never gotten much traction outside the beltway.  Maybe we weren't using enough web apps to care, or maybe no one listens to the security companies because they're presumed to be alarmists who just want to charge you $49.95 a year for something that'll make your computer run slow.

Anyway, it seems to me that the story is now popping up all over the place.  In December the Wall Street Journal ran a series on the information collected by mobile apps (link), this week The New York Times ran a story on the third party tools available to hack wifi hotspots (link), and a professor at Rice University posted on the types of data his class could sniff from his Android phone (link).  A surprising find -- two apps unrelated to location services were broadcasting his GPS location.

Why is this significant?  The mobile operators plan to offload traffic to wifi to reduce network congestion.  If those networks turn out to be insecure, the operators might be blamed for security breaches that result.  Or if more wifi networks are restricted due to security fears, the operators might find it harder to do that offloading in the first place.  Bottom line -- it is risky to depend on someone else's infrastructure as part of your core product.


WikiLeaks: Human society as designed by an open source engineer

O'Reilly ran a fascinating review of Inside WikiLeaks, a new book describing how WikiLeaks operates (link).  It reminded me of some thoughts I had after I heard a talk by Ward Cunningham, one of the creators of the wiki (link).

Most of the social structures in the world today were designed by two groups of people, religious leaders and lawyers.  The religious leaders gave us governments based on moral codes and hierarchies; the lawyers gave us governments based on laws, property, and checks and balances.  In both cases, the people creating the system built into it their own worldviews, their own assumptions about human nature.  The assumptions were so fundamental that I think they didn't even realize they were using them; they just baked them into the system.

Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, and movements like them are profoundly new because they attempt to structure society around the social assumptions of a third group of people: engineers.  And not just any engineers, but open source engineers.  That culture believes in the rationality of human beings and the existence of absolute truth.  It assumes that if the same information were available to everyone we'd be able to settle all disputes through logical discourse.  And it is intensely hostile to authority structures, because by definition they're assumed to get in the way of free discussion.

WikiLeaks is an attempt by that culture to restructure society.  I know that sounds crazy, but here's a quote from the book:

In the world we dreamed of, there would be no more bosses or hierarchies, and no one could achieve power by withholding from the others the knowledge needed to act as an equal player.

If you want to see this idea taken to its logical extreme, check out the short story "The Ungoverned" by science fiction author Vernor Vinge (it's online here).  I'm not saying that's the world we're headed for, but I think we'd all be foolish to assume that WikiLeaks will be the last attempt at open source social engineering.

I think it's actually just the beginning.

Nokia: An Excess of Cleverness

I'm looking forward eagerly to Nokia's strategy announcement this week.  Although Nokia is not highly esteemed in the US, most of the rest of the world recognizes it as an enormously important company: a brilliant manufacturer, a symbol of status and affluence in the developing world, and a source of great pride to its many fans in Europe and elsewhere.  If Nokia could combine its strengths with better execution in software and smartphones, it could be a formidable force in the computing industry as a whole, not just in mobile.

In anticipation of the new strategy, I wanted to share a few thoughts on why Nokia has struggled with the intersection of phones and computing, and what it might do to fix the problems. 

A couple of disclosures first:
--Several years ago I did a consulting project for Nokia.  I've also met with them, I have had a lot of briefings from them, and I know several people who work there.  No inside information from any of those sources has gone into this note.
--Before someone posts a comment saying so, yes my views are colored by the place I live, Silicon Valley.  Your paradigm may vary.

As is often the case for big successful companies, I think Nokia's strengths are also its weaknesses:


Strength 1: Nokia focuses very well...which can lead to denial of reality 

Nokia has a very intense, delivery-focused culture that has enabled it to pursue strategies with awesome focus and determination.  Over the years, the company has transformed itself from a paper mill to a rubber boots company to a video monitor company, etc, etc.  I can think of very few modern firms that are capable of that sort of huge transformation.

But I think that same determination has also sometimes enabled Nokia to live in denial of reality.  As an outsider who has dealt with Nokia a lot over the years, the company often comes across to me as the opposite of a learning organization.  Rather than getting inquiry and questions, when you discuss an issue with Nokia you tend to find that there is already an official Nokia answer to it: self-assured, hermetically sealed, and often sounding slightly condescending.

When Nokia was on a roll and executing beautifully, that self-assurance was entirely justified.  As somebody once said, "it's not arrogance if you can do it."  But as the company faltered, I think its belief in its own specialness and power led it to resist making changes that would have happened at most other companies several years ago.  This deepened Nokia's problems.

A quick look at the company's financials tells the story.  In 2006, Nokia was on a roll.  Its revenue was growing nicely, and it had operating profits of about 12% before taxes.  But starting in 2007, Nokia hit a wall.  Its revenue flattened and then fell.  Despite the revenue problem, Nokia held its R&D, marketing, and administrative spending almost steady in Euro terms, increasing them as a percent of revenue.  It's as if Nokia believed four years of revenue stagnation were just a temporary glitch to be endured rather than a fundamental problem that had to be fixed.

(Note: Fiscal years, all figures in $millions.  The numbers above and below were restated from euros to dollars.  I also excluded miscellaneous revenue and expenses, and one-time charges, because they distort the trends.)

To give you an idea of the impact of Nokia's slowdown, here are a couple of comparisons to Apple.


First, revenue...


Yes, Apple is now a bigger company than Nokia in terms of revenue.  That alone is pretty astonishing to me, and I'm sure it irritates the folks at Nokia, since they routinely bristle at this sort of comparison (link).


Here are expenses (R&D, marketing, and administration) as a percent of revenue.  Lower is better.


Apple has done a nice job of holding its expense growth below its revenue growth.


And here's the payoff:  Operating income


Financially, Apple has just plain run away from Nokia.


When Stephen Elop was announced as CEO of Nokia, people made a lot of hay about his background as a Canadian.  I think that was the wrong bit to focus on.  To me, the most important element of Elop's background was the ten years he spent in Silicon Valley.  I wondered what a Silicon Valley guy would think when coming into a company and seeing financials like these.  I believe the reaction would be horror: "Why didn't you people panic back in 2008?"  The accepted wisdom here is that you just don't let expenses stay high through four years of declining revenue.  That lets the problems fester.  Nokia is now a bit like a patient who has delayed routine medical treatment for so long that he ends up in the emergency room needing surgery.

Elop's now-famous memo on Nokia's problems speaks volumes about the company's culture (link).  Assuming the memo is real (I am taking the word of the press on this), Elop likens Nokia's situation to jumping from a burning oil derrick into the North Sea -- where, as anyone in the Nordic countries would know, you can die of hypothermia in minutes. 

What does it say about the employees' resistance to change that the CEO feels he has to be this alarming? 


Strength 2: Nokia manufactures wonderfully...which produces sterile, inartistic smartphones

Nokia is one of the most efficient manufacturing companies on the planet.  Very few western companies have ever withstood an all-out assault by China Inc, but Nokia, a company from high-cost Finland, has also been for years the world's lowest-cost major producer of phones.  Elop's memo says that cost leadership is now under threat, but still it's an unbelievable accomplishment that ought to be studied in every business school worldwide. 

But the same manufacturing-driven culture that turns out great, cheap feature phones by the dozen breaks down when asked to craft an intricate smartphone in which overall system integration is the most important feature.  Nokia designs phones using a manufacturing-like process in which different groups create features in parallel.  So (to make up an example) one group might do the user interface, another the mail app, and another the browser.  That's very efficient for creating lots of phones quickly, but it means it's very difficult to integrate all of the pieces together closely so they produce a great user experience.  The best smartphones, like the iPhone, are designed holistically, with all of the pieces coordinated together.  A product manager controls the process and can enforce compliance with the product vision.  This process is much slower and less efficient than Nokia's, but when you're creating a product with a lot of software, it ensures that everything works together well.

Apple can get away with this less efficient process because it produces one phone at a time.  Nokia has 89 different phone models available currently in Europe (link).


Strength 3: Nokia makes fantastic plans...over and over and over again

Nokia has for decades been able to hire the brightest people from a very bright country, Finland.  After meeting a lot of Nokia employees, I can tell you that it probably has one of the smartest workforces anywhere.  But all that intelligence has produced an analytical culture that breeds complicated plans elaborately fleshed out by committees.  Its history in the last decade is a series of wickedly clever, logical strategies that were so complex and took so long to develop and implement that they were often obsolete before they came to fruition.  It sometimes seems as if Nokia has been crippled by an excess of cleverness.

I'm reminded of a short story by science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke, Superiority.  In it he described a society that lost a war by continually focusing on the new weapons that were about to come out of the labs, rather than mass-producing the ones that it already knew how to build.

To make matters more difficult, Nokia defined almost every major company in computing and telecommunications as its enemy.  At one time or another it has decided that it needed to dominate or defeat Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Google, the entire handset industry, the network equipment suppliers, and of course the mobile operators.  Even the US government tries to fight only two wars at once; Nokia has been fighting at least five.

There are so many examples of Nokia's busted plans that I don't know where to start.  The Symbian adventure, in all of its permutations, is an obvious one.  Nokia has gone through a number of different organizational structures, each of which was supposed to optimize it to compete in the new world of computing and internet.  But the one that sticks out at the moment is Nokia's venture in tablet computing.

Don't get me wrong, I do know the differences between an iPad and an n900.  They are dramatically different devices that reflect profoundly different design philosophies.  But both were designed for a similar high-level goal -- to make computing and web access mobile.  Nokia shipped its product first, more than three years ago.  Apple shipped last year.  Apple is selling seven million units a quarter, while n900 sales are what, a few hundred thousand?  Nice, but not a new industry.  I know Nokia has learned a lot, and has built a lot of infrastructure, but at some point you have to generate revenue rather than just having a great learning experience.


What do you do, Mr. Elop?

I think the biggest challenge facing Stephen Elop is that he needs to preserve the strengths of Nokia even as he undoes their effects.  Expenses have to come down, but at the same time he needs to invest in innovation.  The company must keep its manufacturing strength, even as it adopts a design philosophy that undercuts manufacturing efficiency.  People at Nokia have to be free to innovate independently, but when left to itself the Nokia culture tends to seek consensus and compromise.

I suspect that given all these changes, even motivating the Nokia workforce may become a challenge.  The Nokia people I've talked to love the company and desperately want it to get better.  But nobody could live through the last few years without getting a bit burned out.  Now the CEO says your home is on fire and you need to jump into freezing water.  Would that memo motivate you to work harder, or would it motivate you to work on your resume?  I was discussing the memo with several of my old friends from Apple today, and one of them joked that the message to employees was, "Everybody come to the communication meeting Friday!  Oh, and you might want to pack up your personal belongings and bring them, just in case."  On Friday, Nokia's people will need to see a carrot -- an attractive, plausible vision for the future of the company -- rather than just a stick.

I'll be watching carefully for that vision.  We're hearing rumors that Nokia is planning to shift away from its current operating systems and build on top of Windows Phone 7.  I doubt that's the full story.  For one thing, Nokia can't completely cut off its current software and switch to something else; there would have to be a long transition.  Besides, in the Nokia earnings call last month, Elop dropped some hints about his plans.  He talked about maintaining two platforms, one aimed at the mass market and another at the high end.  He said Nokia's biggest challenge is at the high end, so that's where I would expect a change is most likely.  Elop also went out of his way to praise the QT software layer, so I would be very surprised if it's killed.  If Windows Phone is in Nokia's future, I think we'd see it at the high end, paired with QT.  So we'd get a hybrid OS with Microsoft's plumbing and Nokia APIs. 
   
That would be a bold move, but it's also extremely complicated.  I remember when Palm tried to build its future on Windows Mobile, and gave up in disgust a couple of years later when Microsoft licensed Palm's innovations to other phone companies.  How would Nokia restrain Microsoft from doing the same thing again?  Elop worked at Microsoft, so I'm sure he has some ideas. 
   
Overall, it sounds like a high risk strategy, almost wickedly clever.  Exciting stuff.  And yet I keep remembering how Nokia's other wickedly clever strategies have worked out.

Note:  I've added more commentary on the Nokia announcement here.

Sony Ericsson: We’re sticking with Android for now

EXCLUSIVE: Windows Phone 7 still a possibility but not a focus

Sony Ericsson has confirmed that it will continue to put its weight behind Google’s Android operating system, although it says that it's still keeping the door open to Microsoft and its Windows Phone 7 mobile phone system.

“We are keeping a watching brief”, Steven Walker, acting head of global marketing at Sony Ericsson told Pocket-lint in a one-to-one interview at CES in Las Vegas.

“We've done a lot of work with Microsoft over the years. We’ve launched a number of 6.xx products, but we made a decision not to bring a product to market in the first wave. We absolutely maintain to keep an open mind towards Windows Phone 7. We continue to engage in a relationship with Microsoft, but we haven’t made any concrete announcement about when and how we would introduce Windows Phone 7 into the portfolio”.

Walker says that Sony Ericsson is instead focusing on Android, galvanising behind the OS to create a strong ecosystem for consumers:

“We do think it’s important at this moment in time to focus our external messaging on Android based products. We see the need as an industry to galvanise behind the Android ecosystem to create a strong ecosystem for consumers”.

Why? Walker says the answer is simple:

“We need to do this so that there will only be a certain number of eco-systems that will prevail. Developers won’t develop for 17 eco-systems. Consumers won’t choose between 100 different eco-systems. In the end only a certain number will prevail”.

But it’s not going to be Android and only Android; like Motorola, Walker does acknowledge that the company will have to embrace other operating systems in the future:

“We shouldn’t limit ourselves to one opportunity, but we aren’t yet ready to make any specific announcement about products. At this moment in time, there is clearly a galvanising within the industry around Android as a creditable alternative to what’s out there, and we think that’s a good thing”.

When asked as to whether he was worried about a possible fragmentation of the Android OS occurring, Walker was confident that Google will sort out the main issue currently on the minds of most high-end Android users: which version are they running?

“Of course some people care. In the higher end of the market the spec savvy consumers do. If you take the broad church of Android users there will be a big chunk of people that don’t care, there will be people that upgrade and don’t notice. I do think that the release thing is an issue of this particular moment. I think once Android becomes a much more accepted part of the market overall I think the release itself will become a less critical part of the whole solution. Right now there is a lot of focus on what release of Android it is on. It’s the first question people ask “which version of Android is it on”, but in a year’s time I don’t think it will be the first question people ask, it will be in the list of questions but it won’t be the first question”.

So does that mean only new phones with the latest versions of the OS? It looks likely:

“That said we are launching a product in Q1 of this year running 2.3, we have recognised the need to have our products on the latest release. Last year we didn’t anticipate the strength of feeling that consumers would have towards the Android release. And again that was a learning experience of the first year of mass market Android smartphones”.

source

Sony Ericsson Xperia X7 and X7 Mini Document

Sony Ericsson Xperia X7 and X7 Mini Document

LG OWNERS TO GET FREE ACCESS TO POPULAR WINDOWS PHONE 7 APPLICATIONS

LG Electronics (LG) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) announced that they are teaming up to provide customers with a free selection of quality applications for LG customers with Windows Phone 7 handsets. LG and Microsoft will subsidize a revolving portfolio of hand-picked applications, providing free access to quality applications that take advantage of the unique features and design of Windows Phone 7.

LG and Microsoft will offer Windows Phone 7 applications across popular categories – including social connectivity, gaming and helpful utilities– ensuring that customers have access to the applications they value most. Ten free applications with a value of more than USD 30 will be given away every 60 days. LG’s Windows Phone 7 customers can download these applications for free (for a period of 60 days) via LG Application Store, which will be accessible directly from LG Windows Phone 7 models.

Selected Windows Phone application developers will be provided with exclusive marketing opportunities and resources to promote their applications with LG. Developers of selected applications will benefit from promotional support through LG’s marketing presence and Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace. LG will promote the new applications through in-store sales events and on the LG Mobile Global Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/bltMvp), creating a larger market for developers and bringing them closer to their audiences.

“When we pledged early last year to support Microsoft’s smartphone strategy, we knew we were making a decision that had the potential to generate ripples in the ecosystem,” said Chang Ma, Vice President of Mobile Communications (MC) Marketing Strategy Team. “Microsoft’s commitment to the developer community is well known and respected in the industry, and we look forward to seeing this partnership with Microsoft lead to greater things.”

“We built the new Windows Phone Marketplace to create new business opportunities for developers and partners alike,” said Brandon Watson, director for Windows Phone at Microsoft. “This collaboration with LG creates a win-win situation for consumers and developers and will further showcase the variety of quality games and applications available on Windows Phone 7.”

What’s more, LG will also be offering its Windows Phone 7 customers free access to even more applications developed directly by the company. These applications will also be available from the LG Application Store and will span social networking services, such as Type n Walk and Voice SNS, as well as practical tools like Subway AR.

LG and Microsoft’s developer program will kick off in November. For more information, please visit www.facebook.com/LGMobileHQ.

Retrevo App for Windows 7 Phone Ready to Roll

Are you one of those hardcore Windows 7 Phone fanboys and just could not wait to get your hands on one?  Retrevo.com, one of my favorite reviews/news site is already on standby with an app build for the the Windows 7 phones.  The app is called RetrevoQ, developed by Retrevo, a Microsoft BizSpark One partner, will feature the same reviews, product comparison and online purchase options as you would find on the desktop version.  Head on over to this photobucket album to check out the rest of the screenshots for yourself.  From the looks of it, it ain't too shabby...  can't wait to see how it will run on Windows 7 phones.

The Full Specs of the HTC Mozart revealed

The full specs of the Windows phone 7 HTC Mozart has been revealed.

iPhone versus Windows Phone 7

This is a comparison of iPhone with Windows Phone 7. We talk about the interfaces of both and how they differ. Windows Phone 7 uses a Start screen as its launcher where you can place a variety of live tiles. The iPhone is very application-centric. We also talk about how Windows Phone 7 doesn't do fast app switching, while the iPhone does.

Better browsing on Windows Mobile

Opera Mini 5.1 improves web experience on Windows Mobile devices
Opera Mini 5.1 for Windows Mobile.

Looking for a better Windows Mobile browser? Opera today released the improved Opera Mini 5.1 for Windows Mobile. The new update brings better support for high resolution handsets, accelerometer support and the ability to set Opera Mini as the default browser.

Opera Mini 5.1 has already been released for Java, Android and BlackBerry phones. Now available for Windows Mobile 2003 SE, 5.x and 6.x handsets, Opera Mini’s server backbone speeds up browsing while reducing the data transferred to the phone. For users roaming on expensive networks, or with pay-as-you-go data plans, Opera Mini can cut your mobile data bill by up to 90 percent.

Opera Mini 5.1 features many compelling updates, including:

* The ability to set Opera Mini as the default browser
* Support for devices with high-resolution (high DPI)
* Improved page layout and font rendering
* Support for auto-rotation
* Advanced configuration support for power users

“Opera Mini 5.1 contains several key improvements for the millions of people with a Windows Mobile phone,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software. “The new Opera Mini is particularly vibrant and really takes advantage of high resolution screens. And, now that you can set Opera Mini as your default browser on a Windows Mobile phone, it is much easier to enjoy the speed boost and data compression. It is our way of making your Windows Mobile phone better.”
Download

Visit m.opera.com with your phone’s default browser, and Opera will automatically select the optimized version for your phone. Opera Mini is free to download and use. Opera Mini works on Windows Mobile 2003 SE, Windows Mobile 5.x and Windows Mobile 6.x phones.
Press

Download Opera Mini 5.1 press kit ( Including: Campaign images, logos and icon ).

Communicator lg Of e900: photographs and characteristic

Polish portal Android.com.pl published the large number of photographs of the communicator lg Of e900 practically in all possible foreshortenings. This model is already known it is said it works under control of the operating system Windows Of phone 7 it has all chances to leave into sale with the advent of on the market for the first models on the base new OS, i.e., before the end of the year. Previously photo and video of this model has already been published, but here in effect nothing known there was nothing about its characteristics.


But now source a little shed light for the technical equipment of the communicator lg Of e900. According to him, apparatus is equipped with 3,7- one inch capacitive sensory screen, but here keyboard he does not have. Device is based on you [chipsete] Qualcomm Of snapdragon QSD8650A with productive 1,3- GHz by processor and equipped with GPS- receiver, sensors of approximation and illumination, with joints of miniUSB and 3,5- mm of audio. The camera of the communicator of unknown permission is capable of writing HD of video. It is assumed that the cost lg Of e900 will be $300-400.

Windows Of phone 7 it reached stage RTM and it was ready to installation to the devices

In [bloge] Windows Of team Of blog appeared the communication, that the operating system Windows Of phone 7 reached the stage of readiness RTM (release to of manufacturing). According to the developers, this is sequential large landmark on the threshold of official [reliza] of the final version of new platform. Actually, the work of the command Of microsoft on the first version Windows Of phone 7 is finished, and are now narrower other companies, which carry out the production of mobile devices, they will conduct its introduction in the owl equipment.

Developers also noted that new OS Windows Of phone 7 was tested by the most thorough means of all mobile platforms Of microsoft. According to them, daily 10 000 devices passed tests, is carried out more than half million hours of active use, the automated tests under laboratory conditions, collaboration with the developers [po] and so on. And here now finally Windows Of phone 7 it is practically ready. In all likelihood, communicators under control of this OS approximately in the month will begin to be let out.

Uruchomienie LG E720 // Booting LG E720

Uruchomienie LG E720 // Booting LG E720

LG C900 vs LG E900 - booting test.

LG C900 vs LG E900 - booting test.

HTC HD2 Mod: Induction charging with extended 2400mah battery

HTC HD2 Mod: Induction charging with extended 2400mah battery

Windows Phone 7 Text Message

For more smartphone news and review: http://is.gd/eIj3l Here's a look at the text messaging application on a Windows Phone 7 development device

Windows Phone 7: Bing Maps

For more smarpthone news and reviews: http://is.gd/ePfrv This is a look at the Bing Maps application for Windows Phone 7. Note that the hardware and software shown here are not final. The app works much like other map apps. You can search for a nearby location, get directions, email location, and even read reviews. You can also pin a location to your Start screen, which is quite unique.

World's premier: LG E900 running on WP7

World's premier: LG E900 running on WP7

LG C900 - booting + short WP7 Tour

LG C900 - booting + short WP7 Tour

Windows Phone 7 – Released To Manufacturing

Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7! While the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of our internal engineering team is largely complete.

Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released. We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes. We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.

I last posted on this blog when we reached the Technical Preview milestone, and we’ve received some great feedback since then which we’ve been able to respond to and improve the smart design throughout the OS. For example, folks loved the Facebook integration in the People Hub, but they also wanted ways to filter their contacts so only the Facebook friends they really know will show up in their contact list – we’ve added support for that. We’ve also made it easy to “like” a post right from the People Hub, or quickly post a message to someone’s Facebook wall directly.

This has been one of the most incredible product development efforts I’ve ever been a part of. Today’s milestone is exciting not just because of what we’ll deliver to customers later this year, but how it sets us up for success over the long term in the mobile space… we’re really just getting started.

We reached today’s milestone because of the tremendous efforts of the entire team including our partners, early adopters, and independent software developers providing feedback. I want to send a huge THANK YOU to this extended team– we couldn’t have done it without you!

Samsung presents on the Russian market the WM- communicator Of wiTu Of pro

The company Of samsung Of electronics presented on the Russian market the new communicator Of wiTu Of pro under control of the operating system Windows Of mobile 6.5.3. It is equipped with sensory screen and QWERTY- keyboard.

The packet of the applications Of microsoft Of office Of mobile 2010 will make it possible to work with the office documents on the communicator - users will obtain access to creation and editing of documents, presentations and tables, and the data input will be simple because of the QWERTY- keyboard. But the service Of office Of communicator Of mobile makes it possible to govern readdressing business bells.


Furthermore, into WiTu Of pro is predetermined the service Of cisco Of webEx, intended for conducting of on-line- conferences and joint operation with the associates throughout the world. Service makes it possible to participate both in the audio and in the video conferences, and to also examine on-line- presentations, in this case exchanging reports with the speaker and other participants in the conference. The communicator Of wiTu Of pro also supports the service Of sybase Of afaria, which makes it possible to establish safe connection with the corporate by applications and the data bases, making it possible to work in the command with the associates independently of their position.

Users will be located on the connection because of the built-in applications for the work with the social networks and multi- Messenger. To exchange information is possible also by means of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB- connection.

Besides the business- functions, the novelty is characterized by the developed of [multimedia] by possibilities. Convenience in hearing music with different sonic effects they ensure the firm technology Of sound Of alive and 3,5 mm of [audiovykhod]. Also new communicators are equipped with the built-in camera with the automatic regimes Of face Of detection and Smile Of shot. The communicator Of samsung Of wiTu Of pro will be accessible in sale in Russia in October 2010 on the tentative retail price of 12 990 rubles.

Technical characteristics Of samsung Of wiTu Of pro:

Network: GSM and WCDMA/HSDPA
Display: 2,62- one inch, sensory, 65 thousand colors, 320x320 TFT LCD
Camera: 3,2-[Mp] with the auto-focus, the CIF- camera
Additional possibilities: Fm- radio, A -GPs
Connection: Bluetooth of v2.1+EDR, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi of 802,11 b/g
Memory: 2 Gb + Of micro SD (to 32 Gb)
Sizes: 117,7x59,8x11,9 mm
Battery: 1500 [mAch]