Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Nokia have officially announced that the new flagship N97 will be available in June.

Previously Nokia had quoted a "first half of 2009" timeframe for the device, leaving some to suggest by the time the phone was available it would already be outdated in a fast-moving market.

The N97 will sport a 3.5-inch, 16 million colour, 640 pixel wide 16:9 widescreen touch display as well as a QWERTY keyboard.
The Nokia N97 will also support up to 48GB of storage, including 32GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16GB microSD card.

Companies like Expansys and Play like to list products as soon as possible, partly for publicity, partly to get the search engine rankings and partly for the pre-orders.

Expansys are now listing the Nokia E75 allowing people to pre-order it for its expected release date of 13 Mar 09.

The features include:

• Quad-band GSM / EDGE, dual-band HSDPA (900/2100) at 3.6Mbps
• 2.4″ 240×320 QVGA display
• 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus, digital zoom, LED flash
• 30FPS QVGA video recording
• aGPS
• WiFi
• FM radio
• microSDHC
• 3.5mm headset, Bluetooth 2.0, microUSB
• Nokia Maps, PDF Document Viewer, ZIP File Manager
• Dual home screen (work/personal)
• 1000 mAh battery
• 630 mins talk, 408 hrs stand-by time

To be honest the specification seems a little weak especially if you compare it to the forthcoming Nokia N97, however it is an E-Series so it will no doubt be bought up by plenty of business users, also the 1000 mAh looks a little poor especially if you compare it to the excellent Nokia E71’s 1500 mAh battery.

Full specification from Expansys after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Crave – Cnet have managed to get their paws on some spy shots of the new E75. The Nokia E75 is an ultra-slim dual-keypad slider with a standard 0-9 pad beneath the display and a landscape QWERTY exposed by the slide.

• 2.4″ 240 x 320 pixel display
• 3.2 megapixel camera
• HSDPA
• Wi-Fi
• microSDHC support
• 3.5mm audio jack
• aGPS
• S60 3rd Edition FP2

While this does look considerably smaller than the E90 I think I would miss my nice large internal screen which has a resolution of 800 x 352 pixels.

More photos after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »

Play.com has put out a release date for the UK on the Nokia N97 smartphone even though Nokia hasn’t officially given the Nokia N97 an official UK release date.

According to the online site that sells everything from DVDs to electronics, Nokia's latest top of the range flagship is going to land in the UK on 31 March for a princely sum of £479.99 without contract.

If this new is correct, the Nokia N97 will reach UK store shelves ahead of the proposed launch of the Palm Pre. However according to Pocket-lint, they have been contacted by Nokia which say this date is untrue and no confirmed date has been set for the UK launch of the Nokia N97.

The N97 will be the flagship model from Nokia and offer a full touchscreen that is 3.5-inch, 16 million colour, 640 pixel and 16:9 widescreen, a qwerty keyboard, and 32GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16GB microSD card.

There is a whole lot of chatter on the Internet today after Nokia announced the new N97 at the Nokia World Watch event in Barcelona yesterday.

There is no surprise that this device has people talking though it is a beast of a machine and from initial appearances seems to be the love child of my beloved E90 and the N95.

The phone is to be released in the first half of 2009 and will cost approximately €550.

As you can see from the above image that the phone uses a full QWERT keypad, it also used a 3.5″, 640 x 360 resistive touch screen and comes with 32Gb of internal memory with a microSD slot allowing you to upgrade the phone to 48Gb. Other features include:

• Tri-band HSDPA 3G
• A-GPS and Stand-alone GPS for directions and geo-tagging
• 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• Flash Lite 3.0 support and Flash Video in web browser
• Music player up to 36 hours playback time
• Share and Ovi services support

The operating system is Symbian (as usual) and uses S60 5th Edition and is designed to make the most of social networks such as Facebook allowing you to utilise the homescreen for Facebook or RSS widgets.

The phone certainly ticks a lot of boxes for me, though with the release of Android I would prefer to see something a little better than Symbian on the phone. Though there is no surprise there seeing as Nokia now own Symbian. However according to Engadget Linux could become a possibility in the future for high end phones, but I will believe it when I see it.

We previously blogged about possible pictures of the Nokia E91, and we have just posted the internal roadmap of Nokia Smartphones.

So did any of the road details match up with a possible Nokia E91 Specification?

The answer is, possibly. The best possible match I can see for the E91 is the phone codenamed Eitri which is due for internal release in week 17 of 2009 (Mid April).

This is a landscape candybar with QWERTY, 3.5-inch 640×350 display, minimum 8GB ROM, microSD, pressure sensitive touch UI with tactile feedback and gestures, charging via USB, 5MP AF camera with dual LED flash, integrated compass and accelerometer, proximity sensor, FM transmitter.

Some pretty impressive specs there. While it may only be a small thing I am impressed that Nokia have FINALLY decided to go with USB charging.

It may not be the E91 as there is no mention of dual screens, and the screen is actually smaller than the current internal screen with a 3.5-inch 640×350 display compared to the current 4 inch 800 x 352 display. However this could indicate they are releasing a smaller version giving it more mass appeal.

Engadget Mobile have a very interesting post today. Apparently the internal roadmap for Nokia Smartphones has been leaked. This is basically a list of all the smartphones Nokia are working on, however this is not a list of the phones that will be released. Quite a few will be cancelled, others will be re-specced though it does give us a taster of what is to come.

There are quite a few nice sounding phones though including a 8 megapixel, half QWERTY keyboard, 128MB RAM, 8GB ROM phone codenamed Corolla due internally in March 2009.

Also a couple of widecreen touch devices, IP08 and Ivalo with the later having 32GB of storage!

The table of phones is after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am due for an upgrade in January, and as always I find myself in a quandary about what to get. There does not seem to be a phone out there that meets my requirements, a lot of phones tick the right boxes but then will miss one or 2 important things off, leaving me with an option I am not entirely happy about.

I suppose the problem is that I want all the bells and whistles and not have to pay a fortune for it, and if a company released the "perfect phone" it would mean people wouldn't bother changing it so would harm the profits.

Anyway what I want from my phone is:

Large internal memory - The iPhone, N96, and Omnia all offer this. I would want 8GB minimum or 16GB would be nice

MicroSD - If I had 16GB internal and a 16GB card I would have plenty of room to play with! I believe the N96 and Omnia do this while also having the internal memory.

Smart OS - I'm a geek, I like functionality, and a smart OS is the best way to get it. Though one issue is that I don't want Windows Mobile. I will try it again if I HAVE to but my experience with my HTC Tytn was not pleasant. Symbian is the most likely option, though I strongly suspect Android will become a strong contender if not the main contender eventually.

3.5G (HSDA) - Thanks to reduced mobile broadband prices and decent mobile browser I find myself using my phone for browsing a lot more. I am sorry Apple but 3G is just not acceptable.

A decent camera with a xenon flash. I don't need a stupid million megapixel camera but 4 or 5 megapixel would be nice, and an LED flash is just CRAP. I believe it is the image sensor that is more important for a digital camera so I would prefer a decent one of them rather than lots of megapixels.

Large touch screen + decent screen resolution - The iPhone may fall down in quite a few areas but you can't fault its screen or the touch screen user interface! If I am going to use my phone online, it makes life a lot easier if you the screen can display a good % of a normal web page, obviously I am not going to get 1280x800 but as much width as possible would be good.

Pull out keyboard - Ok this maybe a little more disputed by people than other features, and I have to admit the iPhone does the best of a bad situation but I still think real keys are important.

Exchange Functionality - Again probably not the most important feature for the average consumer but it is important and quite a lot of phones (iPhone, S60 phones) do it so there is no excuse not too. Blackberry functionality would be helpful (not so much for me though) and decent push email.

Proper media keys / media integration - At the end of the day I am looking for convergence, I don't want 16GB of storage for nothing, I want to play my music on the phone, so I want to access the music easily! I also want it to be able to play the files I put on it, rather than having to convert them via some software.

A 3.5mm headphone jack - Again I want to listen to music, using adaptors is just annoying and proprietary adapters are the most ridiculous thing in the world! i.e the G1 apparently needs a custom ExtUSB adaptor that isn't even available immediately! What are they playing at!

Mini USB charging and PC connection - Again I hate all things proprietary. My E90 even has a mini USB but then wont charge up via it!!

Built in GPS - Not that I use it much, but it is very useful for a lot of people.

Wi-Fi + Bluetooth - Self explanatory really

A decent batter life would also be nice, oh and actually the ability to make calls!

I don't think form factor is that much of an issue, the iPhone is hardly small, nor is the G1, and the N96 is quite fat. Though the iPhone goes to show that people will happily have a large phone as long as it looks good!

I suppose that is quite a lot of phone, and looking at it, it sort of kills off the Music player AND the sat nav market but phones are moving this way anyway but I just wished they hurried up a little!

At the moment I think the Nokia N96 or Samsung Innov8 are the closest to my requirements, though the Samsung Innov8 doesn't appear to be freely available on contract.

What other features do you want to see on a phone? And I mean realistic features, I am sure I have missed a few off