Nokia announces new C6 and C7 Symbian^3 handsets with 8 megapixel cameras, 720p video

” At Nokia World, the destination for people passionate about mobility, Nokia today announced a family of smartphones powered by the all new Symbian platform which brings significant enhancements in speed and ease of use. The new devices, which are tightly integrated with enhanced Ovi services and apps, reinforce Nokia’s vision of a mobile industry that is increasingly being defined by socially connected, location-based devices and experiences.
Highlights include:

– Three new smartphones, Nokia E7, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6, which join the previously announced Nokia N8 to form a family of Symbian products. – The latest version of the Symbian platform brings more than 250 new features and improvements and retains the familiarity enjoyed by millions of smartphone users worldwide;
– Showcase of the Nokia N8, the ultimate entertainment smartphone and world’s best cameraphone;
– Availability of a richer Ovi Store experience – starting with the Nokia N8 – that includes a friendlier look and feel, and more popular and unique apps and games;
– The latest beta release of free Ovi Maps with new pedestrian and motorist features.

“Today our fight back to smartphone leadership shifts into high gear,” said Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President, Markets, Nokia. “Despite new competition, Symbian remains the most widely used smartphone platform in the world. Our new family of smartphones introduced today feature the all-new Symbian OS, rewritten to be faster, easier to use, more efficient and more developer friendly.” Savander also commented on the high level of anticipation for the Nokia N8. “Based on the level of consumer interest and the highest online pre-orders in Nokia history, we expect big things from the Nokia N8.”

A smartphone for everyone.
In addition to the Nokia N8, the new family of faster, more intuitive Symbian smartphones includes:

– Nokia C7 – beautifully crafted, sleek social networking smartphone. Get live updates from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and keep track of new email from your Yahoo! or Gmail accounts directly on the homescreen. The Nokia C7 features a 3.5-inch AMOLED display and a stunning combination of stainless steel, glass and soft edges. Estimated retail price is EUR 335, excluding taxes and subsidies.

– Nokia C6 – the small and stylish smartphone. Sporting a 3.2-inch AMOLED display with full touch capabilities and Nokia ClearBlack technology for improved outdoor visibility, the latest Nokia C6 (C6-01) features the best of social networking and mobile entertainment in a stainless steel and glass design. Stay connected to email, access millions of tracks through Ovi Music, and download apps and games from the Ovi Store. Estimated retail price is EUR 260, excluding taxes and subsidies.

As a smartphone family, the Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia C7, Nokia C6 share several similarities. All are built on the new version of Symbian, the world’s most popular smartphone platform. It strikes a balance of innovation and intuition offering a variety of improvements and features such as support for multiple homescreens, visual multitasking, gesture-based interactions and a noticeable reduction in prompts — all while presenting a familiarity that means millions of people can pick up one of Nokia’s new smartphones and instantly know how to use it. People will also discover free Ovi Maps, access to Ovi Store, messaging, social networking and other experiences that come standard across all of these smartphones.

The Nokia E7, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6 are all expected to begin shipping before the end of the year.

…with content for everyone
The new family of Symbian smartphones will include a completely updated Ovi Store experience. The new store experience is driven by a friendlier user interface and a new collections feature to quickly access popular apps and games available now, or soon, such as foursquare, Angry Birds, Need for Speed Shift and Real Golf 2011. Additionally, Ovi Store will continue to offer exclusive apps including Audiotube, Tesco and others along with favorites such as Fring, Shazam, and Asphalt 5.

For developers, the uniform Symbian platform together with the Qt development environment enables easy smartphone application creation and extensive reach.

A mobile world centered on where you are
Free access to Ovi Maps, the world’s most comprehensive walk and drive navigation, to Nokia smartphones was only the start. With the latest beta release of Ovi Maps, available for download today, people will benefit from new features and even greater map detail. Ovi Maps beta adds visibility to subways, trams and trains in 85 cities around the world, real-time traffic, safety alerts in or out of navigation mode, visibility to parking and petrol stations, and speed limit warnings. In addition, people can use the improved search capabilities and share their location immediately via text messages or email to other browser-enabled phones.

New gear for on-the-go
Nokia also showcased the Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-905i offering an improved audio experience with active noise cancellation and a collection of five unique new Bluetooth headsets designed for a variety of needs, including hands-free multitasking, talking and navigating in the car with voice guidance.

Nokia launch the E7, the next ‘Communicator’

“Billed as the ultimate business smartphone, the Nokia E7 boasts Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support alongside a luscious 4-inch touchscreen display, which uses Nokia’s ClearBlack technology for improved outdoor visibility. The Nokia E7 also comes with a slide out four-row QWERTY keyboard making it the ideal mobile business device. Despite the addition of a full keyboard, the E7 is only a smidge deeper than the Nokia N8 at 13.6mm thin. The device also boasts an 8-megapixel snapper and comes complete with 16GB of on-board storage.

As a business device, the Nokia E7 comes sporting a raft of security features including business grade device lock and wipe functionality, secure intranet access and remote device management. These come alongside its connectivity and productivity prowess, with support for Mail for Exchange, Microsoft Communicator Mobile and Microsoft Share Point Server. Business folk on the move will also benefit from free walk and drive navigation thanks to Ovi Maps including premium guides from the likes of Lonely Planet and Via Michelin.

Like the Nokia N8, the Nokia E7 also boasts an HDMI connection and Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound. With the 8-megapixel camera, users will be able to shoot and edit HD quality images (including 720p video) and sound. As a Symbian^3 device, users can customise up to three homescreens and get live updates from the likes of Facebook and Twitter live on their homescreens.

Those on the move will welcome the Nokia E7′s travel-friendly 18 days of standby time and up to 9 hours of talktime. The device, which will be available in dark grey, silver white, green, blue and orange will be available in the last quarter of 2010 and is expected to retail for €495 before taxes and subsidies.

Key hardware points

  • 123.7x 62.4x 13.6mm; 176g, clamshell form-factor, with predominantly metal materials with some plastic (edges and keyboard).
  • 4 inch, ‘Clear Black Display’ Polarized OLED (for better outdoor visibility), capacitive screen; 640×360 pixels resolution
  • 8 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash; video recording at 720p resolution (1280×720) and 25 frames per second. Camera aperture of F2.8, focal length 5.4.
  • Integrated A-GPS with location support for GPS, A-GPS, WLAN and Cell-ID.
  • 3.5 mm Nokia AV connector for audio in/out and TV-out
  • FM transmitter and FM Radio (with RDS)
  • BL-4D (1200mAh) Li-Ion battery, not removeable, as on the N8
  • WCDMA 850/900/1700/1900/2100 and GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 (exact bands depend on market variant)
  • WiFi; WLAN IEEE802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0
  • 135MB of internal memory, 16GB mass memory and microSD card slot (supports sizes upto 32GB)
  • 256 MB RAM; 512 MB ROM
  • USB on the go (first seen on the N8)
  • Processor listed on Forum Nokia as ARM 11 @ 680MHz with 3D Graphics HW Accelerator with OpenGL-ES 2.0 support (i.e. graphics co-processor).


Key software points

  • Runs Symbian^3, multi-page homescreen with fully customisable widgets (three pages, six widgets per page).
  • Mail for Exchange, Microsoft Communicator Mobile and support for intranet and extranet portals built on Microsoft SharePointServer
  • Pre-installed productivity apps include Vlingo, F-Secure Anti- theft, QuickOffice and World Traveler
  • Business apps from Ovi Store include Salesforce for Symbian, Bloomberg, F-Secure Mobile security, Microsoft Communicator Mobile, JoikuSpot Security
  • Business grade security solutions such as device lock and wipe, secure intranet access and device management
  • More Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync policies supported and higher security with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync certificate based authentication*
  • Cisco and Juniper SSL VPN support*, in addition to existing rich IPSec VPN compatibility
  • Rich OMA DM support with enforceable encryption and device controls
  • F-Secure Anti-theft protection to remotely lock, wipe and locate misplaced devices
  • Visual task switcher (see contents of application from the task switcher)
  • Streamlined menu structure with fewer prompts (e.g. no connectivity prompts)
  • Single tap ‘Direct UI’ paradigm (a change from the double tap Symbian^1)
  • Symbian^3 contains very significant underlying changes, including features such as writeable demand paging, which will greatly improve RAM memory usage.
  • Flash Lite 4; with compatibility of Flash 10 for video codec and format support
  • Ships with Ovi Maps (free car and pedestrian navigation in 70 countries and free premium travel guides), Nokia Messaging (both email and instant messaging), Ovi Music (music store) and Ovi Store (content store).

* Available in a software update in Q1 2011


Steve says

The combination of 4″ ‘CBD’ (read ‘improved’) OLED screen and a full keyboard does sound very enticing, backed up by most of the innards of the top flight N8. I had a play with a pre-production E7 a while back and loved the overall form factor, with one caveat: the raised keyboard edges made thumb-typing on the edge keys a little awkward.

The screen mechanism is almost a direct lift from the N97 – I haven’t heard of a single N97 (or N97 mini) hinge breaking yet, so, despite the apparent fragility, I’d expect this to work very well. Certainly having the display raised up at an angle fits in well with the ‘desktop in your pocket’ business focus and it’ll make a good professional communications tool.

The continued use of the BL-4D 1200mAh battery is a worry though, as on the N8. I know there are power efficiencies involved with the new chipsets and Symbian^3, but the Communicator range has always featured the biggest and best batteries that Nokia make. In addition, the Communicator has always had a replaceable battery, giving the convenience of being able to swap batteries on the fly if needed. With its aluminium body, the E7 looks to be like the N8 and have a non-user-replaceable battery – which in my view is a definite negative point. Sorry, Nokia – this is one Apple-esque trend that I really don’t like.

Overall, do I want one, though? Heck, yes. It may be two steps backwards from the E90 in some regards, but it’s ten steps forward in every other department.

webOS 1.4.5 available for Verizon Pre Plus, AT&T Pre Plus

“As expected, webOS 1.4.5 is now available for the Pre Plus on Verizon. While we know that it’s going to let you download more games to help pump up the numbers for the developers looking to get their share of the one million dollars Palm is giving away in the PDK Hot Apps program, we’re curious to hear if there are any other improvements.
At the top of our list: tell us if 1.4.5 on your Pre actually fixes the currently-busted GPS functionality so we don’t have to resort to Homebrew fixes. We’re not especially hopeful it will, but hey, at least you can look forward to better Mobile Hotspot with Windows Visa 64-bit, slightly improved battery life, and all the Jewels you can handle.
Homebrewers – as usual most patches are ok, but these should be removed before updating. We like to suggest removing themes before updates, too.
Update:
The AT&T Palm Pre Plus also looks to be getting the update as we speak! No word yet on whether there are additional features hidden in the AT&T update and also no word whether or not the AT&T Pixi is getting 1.4.5 just yet. – Thanks Sett!
Update 2: Oddly, Palm’s release notes for Verizon Palm Pre webOS 1.4.5 don’t mention the battery or Mobile Hotspot improvements from Verizon’s site. AT&T’s release notes don’t reveal any surprises.” via precentral.net