Evolution of the Nokia camera phone

2002 brought us some key world events. The criminal investigation and subsequent collapse of Enron, the US invasion of Afghanistan, the World Cup in Japan and South Korea and not forgetting the release of the first Nokia camera phone.

The 7650 had a 0.3 MP camera and 640×480 resolution. Not much by today’s standards but at the time, it was cutting edge stuff. If we fast forward 10 years, those specs change slightly. How does 12 megapixels, Carl Zeiss Optics, Xenon Flash and 720p HD video sound?

What happened in those ten years between was an evolution that has led many of us to photographic enlightenment.

Take a look at our Nokia camera phone timeline and watch closely at how the image quality has slowly improved to what it is today.

2002 – Nokia 7650

Specs:

• 0.3 MP
• 640×480 VGA

Nine years ago camera phones were relatively new. This photo is of a plane trail left in the sky.

2004 – Nokia 6630

Specs:

• 1.3 MP, 1280×960
• Video calling

The Nokia 6630 incorporated video calling with its 1.3 MP camera.

2005 – Nokia N70

Specs:

• 2 MP
• 0.3 MP second camera, VGA

The Nokia N70 incorporated a  second ‘front’ camera as well as a 2 MP primary camera.

2005 – Nokia N90

Specs:

• 2.0 MP, Carl Zeiss Optics, autofocus LED flash
• Videocalling

A beautiful serene landscape with great field of depth, captured on the Nokia N90

2006 – Nokia N93

Specs:

• 3.15 MP, 3x optical zoom, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash
• CIF videocall secondary camera

Great close-up water image used by the N93 here

2006 – Nokia N73

Specs:

• 3.2 MP (Carl Zeiss Tessar lens with autofocus and 20x digital zoom)
• 640×480 VGA second camera with 2x digital zoom

It was nearly 5 years ago that the N73 with its 3.2 MP Carl Zeiss Tessar lens made its debut.

2006 – Nokia N95

Specs:

• 5 MP (Carl Zeiss optics autofocus, LED flash)
• CIF video call second camera

The above photo demonstrates the quality available from the N95 and its Carl Zeiss autofocus optics.

2007 – Nokia N82

Specs:

• 5 MP with Carl Zeiss Optics, autofocus and Xenon flash
• CIF video call on second camera

The Nokia N86 gave us Xenon flash which optimised photo taking with its 5 MP camera.

2009 – Nokia N86

Specs:

• 8 MP with 28mm wide camera lens
• VGA video call on second camera

The Nokia N86 stepped it up a notch with an 8MP primary camera with wide camera lens.

2010 – Nokia N8

Specs:

• 12 MP with Carl Zeiss Optics and Xenon flash
• VGA video call on second camera


The 12 MP Carl Zeiss camera with Xenon flash allows for stunning photographic opportunities.

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Mobile Documents update

Users of Mobile Documents by Visiarc will be happy to know that Nokia Beta Labs now has an update ready for download, bringing the latest version to 0.9.20. With added features along with some bug fixes, anybody using the old version should update now. And if you haven’t tried it yet, then there’s no better time to give it a whirl. Read on to find out more.

We’ve mentioned Mobile Documents before, receiving great feedback from everybody using it and your suggestions and comments didn’t go unnoticed by the developers. The update isn’t pushed right to your device, however navigating to the Nokia Beta Labs page will see you up-and-running in no time.

For those who haven’t use Mobile Documents yet, it’s an email client that uses cloud-technology, which means it stores everything you receive – including attachments – on a server, saving you data costs as you don’t need to download as much. Previewing your attachments before you download them can save a lot of time money, and for more details you can read our original post, here.

What new features are in v0.9.20?

• Support for Exchange 2003, 2007 & 2010 mail accounts.
• Support for Hotmail, Live & MSN accounts.
• Attach files stored on your phone directly to outgoing emails.
• Multi-publish of files to your archives.
• Options when tapping the URL (Copy to clipboard).
• Edit signature.
• Captcha errors are now shown to the user for Gmail and Google Docs.
• Setting if you want to put your signature on top or last when replying.
• Exit now lets you choose if you still want notifications or not (leaving the service running but closing the UI).
• Also for S60 3rd edition and Symbian^1 all the new features introduced in version 0.9.19 for Symbian^3 has been added as well. 

• 
  
  Bugfixes in version 0.9.20

  • Fring issue now has a work around in all versions. Later when Fring has updated their client this fix will be removed.
  • Email widget issue resolved when un-installing Mobile Documents (Symbian^3 only).
  • Animated theme background effects caused the background in the lists to not refresh and garbling the display (Symbian^3 only).
  • When composing you could end up with only half of the screen.
  • Next softkey now works in the setup of new mail accounts.
  • Grey screen when logging in.
  • 1 hour and 2 hour intervals now works.
  • Enable autostart / Disable autostart changed to Autostart (On/Off).
  • Numerous other smaller fixes.
  One welcome change I’ve also noticed is that when you click the email widget on the homescreen, it takes you directly into the Inbox of the email account, which it didn’t before. Have you given Mobile Documents a try? Let us know what you think of it.

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Nokia blows bubbles over your display

Hello all! Do you remember that song – “I’m forever blowing bubbles in the wind”? Even if you don’t, that still reminds me of this application I want to talk to you a bit about: the  bubbles new application developed by Nokia.

Pino told me the other week that the bubbles are creating some buzz around the blogosphere and I decided to add up to it. I’ll present you in the next few lines my so far relationship to these little soap-like rings.

Before anything else, you should know that the app is an experimental version, therefore many things will go wrong: the installation, sudden crashing, weird colour display at times (at sudden moves it happened to me) or the crash of other apps opened in the background.

I installed the core kit + additionals on my Nokia N8, but for some reason I didn’t get all the bubbles that I should according to these guys: my circles are Key, Speedometer, Flashlight, Friends, Profile and Maps.

The intention of the app is very nice: speeding up your access to whatever interests you. This worked for me only when it came to Maps and theProfile changes.

The Maps bubble gives you two options: either go to the Maps Menu or directly to My Position. This comes in handy when you need to find out quickly where you are, find an important place nearby or set the navigation for your destination.

The Maps bubble gives you two options: either go to the Maps Menu or directly to My Position. This comes in handy when you need to find out quickly where you are, find an important place nearby or set the navigation for your destination.

The Profile bubble is useful when you’re in between meetings or different environments and you need to swap fast between Silent, General or Meeting. It saves you from all the other steps, you just swing the bubble on the screen.

I’m happy to be able to see my position on the map by selecting the corresponding bubble or to switch between different profiles only by a bubble-tap 

The bubbles I enjoyed less were again two of them. Contacts, because I can’t decide for which favourites to show up in the bubbles. I’m still traditional on this matter and I prefer going through the agenda and selecting my own. I would have liked the New Message bubble from the core kit to appear on my phone, though!

The other bubble I liked less was Unlock, I’m still quicker unlocking the phone using the slide on the side than going to the bubbles, selecting the key and bringing it to the lock.

There are two more bubbles from a “lighter” category; one of them is completely useless, but catchy: theSpeedometer bubble. Made just for fun, to track the speed of your bubbles, it can be a cool little tool when you need some competition with your friends. My top speed is 55.31, anyone beating that?

The other one is the Flashlight bubble: I pleasantly discovered while playing with it how much light my Nokia N8 can shed (I had no idea how to do this before) and it proved already pretty handy when climbing to the high bed at night.

I wish the app could offer me more bubbles though, among which: my music, my photos, the Store, my bookmarked websites, connectivity.

Last and maybe least, the bubbles app gives more character to the phone and it’s good for breaking awkward silence – “Hey, check out my bubbles”, “Wow, what do they do?”.

Did anyone else around try them? 

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7 Nokia world records that will blow your mind!

You might have read the report that came out recently, showing that an amazing 65.2% of Chinese mobile subscribers are buying apps from the Ovi Store. (This is nearly three times more than Android Market and Apple Store users combined.) We don’t know about you, but this figure really blew our minds. And it turns out that Nokia holds plenty more amazing records. Here are seven that made us go wow!

The world’s most listened to tune

The Nokia tune comes from the composition Gran Vals, by the Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega. Anssi Vanjoki who, along with Lauri Kivinen, selected the famous excerpt brought it to Nokia in 1993. It is now heard worldwide an estimated 1.8 billion times per day, or about 20,000 times per second!

The world’s most popular mobile game

Snake, now over thirteen years old, was originally programmed for the Nokia 6100 series of handsets. Adapted for mobile phones by Taneli Armanto, who still works for Nokia, it’s now embedded in over 350 million devices worldwide, making it the most popular mobile game ever.

The world’s biggest manufacturers of digital cameras

There are now more than 4 billion people worldwide taking pictures with their mobiles. The camera phone is already the most widely used type of camera in history. Consequently, since 2008, Nokia has been the world’s largest manufacturer of digital cameras.

The world’s biggest cinema screen

Last year in Rosengård, Sweden, Nokia constructed a cinema so large that it had to be assembled and watched outside. The 1,428 square metre (that’s 51 metres x 28 metres) screen was hoisted up in front of a tower block and held in place by two giant cranes, while four XLM HD30 projectors, each weighing 140 kilos, projected the Prince Persia movie onto it.

The world’s most popular mobile phone

Of the estimated 5 billion cellphone users worldwide, only a lucky minority have smartphones. But the Nokia 1100 is owned by an incredible 250 million people worldwide, making it the world’s most popular phone.

The world’s smallest stop motion character animation

In an ambitious project the makers of Wallace and Gromit, Aardman Animations combined the might of the Nokia N8′s image capture ability with the concept behind Professor Fletcher’s invention of the CellScope. The result was the fabulous story of Dot.

The world’s most capable multitasking phone

Okay, this one isn’t confirmed by the Book of Guinness World Records, but we’re yet to see any evidence of it being broken. In September 5th 2010, the Nokia E5 ran a massive 74 apps simultaneously. This smashed the previously record of 62 held by a Samsung Omnia HD running on hacked firmware. Now that sure is an amazing amount of multitasking!

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Win 2 new Nokia N8’s with #sharetheloveNokia

Ladies and Gentlemen and lovers alike,

It’s that time of year again – things start to get a little flirtatious for the singletons among us and

rather more loved up if you’re lucky enough to already have found that special someone.

Over at Nokia Entertainment they are wholeheartedly behind the idea of Valentines Day, the world could always

use a little more love, eh? So this Valentines they’re inviting you to “Share The Love” via the medium of twitter.

Who doesn’t like to receive a Valentines message? They want you to @message your Valentine (whether you’ve

already got them or this is your first move) with a valentines message and tag it#sharetheloveNokia.

Their favourite message will win two brand spanking new Nokia N8’s! One for you, and one for your Valentine. As it’s Valentines, and music is the food of love, as an added treat, they’re going to throw in 100 tracks each for the winners too – so you can make your perfect loved mix!

So, just to recap: @message your hearts desire with a Valentines message, tag it #sharetheloveNokia and you’ll be in the running to win you and your brand new N8s.

The competition started on Monday at 10am (GMT).

You can find out more about Nokia Entertainment on their twitter page.

Happy Valentines day!

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