Nokia N9 gets Android Ice Cream Sandwich port thanks to Project Mayhem (video)

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  • March 24, 2012 at 3:55 am

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Nokia N9 running Android Ice Cream Sandwich

So what do you do when you end up with an awesome handset but with a dead operating system? Well you port a very much alive mobile OS to it. The Nokia N9 is running the now defunct MeeGo, which was abandoned by the Linux Foundation in favor of the HTML 5 Tizen. Owners of the polycarbonate body beauty should not despair just yet, developers are at at work, and they’ve already managed to create a pretty solid port of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for the device.

News of Project Mayhem, as it’s called, broke a few weeks ago when the first images of a Nokia N9 running Android ICS appeared, but now a developer has released the first Alpha version of the port, which anyone can download and try-out — at their own risk of course. The port even allows Nokia N9 owners to dual-boot between MeeGo and Android 4.0.3.
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Nokia 808 PureView 41-megapixel sensor drew its inspiration from the skies

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  • March 10, 2012 at 7:25 pm

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Nokia 808 PureView held by woman taking pic

We live for the moments when companies think out of the box, and Nokia has been doing a lot of that lately. The latest innovation from the company is the 41-megapixel camera sensor in the newly announced Nokia 808 PureView. Yeah that would be an insane number of pixels even for a full-frame DSLR and that’s actually stuffed in a smartphone.

The camera phone turned heads at this year’s MWC 2012, and although the Symbian Belle-powered 808 will not be released in the States, Nokia’s PureView technology will soon find its way into the company’s Windows Phone devices.
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No Nokia 808 PureView for the US, but the 41-megapixel camera technology is coming soon to Windows Phone devices

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  • March 5, 2012 at 1:35 pm

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Nokia 808 PureView smartphone in white, red and black

One of the most exciting devices presented at this year’s MWC in Barcelona was the Nokia 808 PureView. The Symbian Belle smartphone turned heads with it’s 41-megapixel camera. As we’ve explained in our initial coverage the PureView technology entails both a larger sensor (1/1.2-inch against the typical 1/3.2-inch found in most phones), Carl Zeiss optics and, most importantly, the ability to oversample pixels by combining seven pixels into one, resulting in a sharper and cleaner image.
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Nokia 808 PureView 41-megapixel sensor sized-up and explained (sample pictures)

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  • February 29, 2012 at 1:18 pm

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Nokia 808 PureView phone back and front

One of the most interesting devices to come out of this year’s Mobile World Congress is the Nokia 808 PureView. The 808 runs Symbian Belle over the company’s current crop of smartphones running Windows Phone. What makes it special is the new 41-megapixel camera sensor — no that’s not a typo — paired with Carl Zeiss optics, which Nokia has aptly named PureView.

Nokia hasn’t gone completely crazy, jamming more pixels into a tiny sensor and letting you handle crappy 41-megapixel files. First of all the sensor size is 1/1.2 inch, about five times larger than the typical 1/3.2-inch sensor found in most mobile phones. Because the sensor is bigger, the pixel size is still 1.4µm, the same as most current phones. You can actually see the 808 PureView sensor below at the bottom right, compared to an 8-megapixel and a 5-megapixel sensor this thing looks enormous. When you combine the Carl Zeiss f/2.4 lens and a Xenon flash the entire camera array takes a substantial amount of real estate.
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Behind the scenes on the Nokia Lumia series body color palette

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  • February 4, 2012 at 11:00 am

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Nokia Lumia polycarbonate body cyan and magenta

In a tech world dominated by black and silver, Nokia took a different path when designing the polycarbonate body for its Lumia smartphone series. In a post at Conversations by Nokia, materials designer Tiina Aarras takes us through the long decision process that led to the iconic cyan, magenta, black and white bodies of the Lumia N9, 800 and 900.

An integral part of the design is that the plastic in not painted on top, the color that you see is the color of the plastic. So if you scratch the body, you would still have the same bright original color. From the designer’s mouth, it’s not just plastic, it’s a single piece of polycarbonate plastic. And they’re not just colors – they’re the most saturated, intense colors you’ll find on a phone.
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Nokia Lumia 800 battery life fixing update rolling out

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  • January 21, 2012 at 4:55 pm

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Nokia Lumia 800 blue

Nokia is promising to finally end your Lumia 800 battery blues with a second software update. Ever since the Nokia Lumia 800 was released, the device has been plagued with a variety of battery issues. Nokia traced the problem to a software bug and released an update last December but battery life problems remained. If it’s any consolation, the Lumia 800 is not the only device to have faced battery problems, iPhone 4S users had a bone to pick with their devices.

The update has already started rolling out and we are hopping it will finally crush the remaining battery bugs. The update is also promising Wi-Fi connectivity enhancements. It will be a rolling update over the next two weeks, so don’t worry if you don’t get it immediately.
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Watch the ultimate gadget porn video: the Nokia N9 gets assembled

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  • October 24, 2011 at 4:34 pm

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Nokia N9 gets assembled

The Nokia N9 MeeGo smartphone is an all-screen unibody beauty. Unfortunately, many around the world will never get to see the N9 and its MeeGo OS in person. Following Nokia’s agreement with Microsoft on using Windows Phone on its smartphones, the MeeGo running N9 will not be released in any key markets such as the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany and Japan.

As an ultimate tease to us, Nokia has just released a video showing an N9’s journey through the manufacturing process, from getting its polycarbonate body precisely machined, the 1GHz TI OMAP3630 processor and 1GB of RAM installed on its mainboard, the 8-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss 28mm wide angle f/2.2 optics fitted and finally the Gorilla Glass 3.9-inch AMOLED touchscreen display attached with love.

The N9 is expected to land in Australia and Latin America shortly. Fortunately, those living in the countries excluded from this release, will be able to put their hands around a pretty identical handset running Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, instead of MeeGo, the rumored Nokia 800 a.k.a. “Sea Ray”.

Oh, yes, the video is after the break, if you are feeling strong enough to resist your urges.
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Nokia Sea Ray Windows Phone 7 smartphone strutting its stuff on video

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  • July 19, 2011 at 3:38 pm

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Nokia Sea Ray Windows Phone 7 smartphone

The first Windows Phone 7 smartphone to come from Nokia, code-named ‘Sea Ray’, was first showcased last month in a leaked internal video from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. Today, a new video has surfaced, demonstrating the curvy phone in its 360-degree glory.

The Sea Ray sports a design similar to the Nokia N9, which was announced in June this year. Elop had revealed that the smartphone would have a Gorilla Glass curved display and a ‘pillow-shaped’ design.
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Nokia N9 claims ‘fastest image-capturing phone’; we test: HTC Sensation faster still

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  • June 22, 2011 at 12:17 pm

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Camera latency comparison - HTC Sensation comes out first

As we’ve had some nightmarish experiences with phone cameras in the past we were very pleasantly surprised by the camera shooting speed of the HTC Sensation while we were testing it. So after reading the following today on Nokia’s official blog, pared with the graph above, regarding the new Nokia N9 camera we wanted run own comparison.

From Nokia’s blog:

Jens continues from here to explain the speed of the camera.
Jens Wilke: Once you press the on-screen camera key, the image is taken immediately. It’s the fastest image-capturing phone on the market. In order to take a photo, a series of events must occur: the camera is turned on, viewfinder is ready, focus on the subject and the image is captured. On the Nokia N9, this all happens in 2.6 seconds – much faster than our competitors. The HTC HD7 does all this in 8.3 seconds, the Samsung i5500 Galaxy 5 takes 5.8 seconds and the Apple iPhone 4 does this in 3 seconds. We’ve made sure the camera experience is as smooth and as fast as possible.

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