Monthly Archives: November 2011

dual sim main imageGLOBAL – Holidays are for giving and connecting and now Dual SIM gives you several phones in one. These holidays you might be visiting your family in a different part of the country, or even the world. With a Dual SIM you can swap between SIM cards, so you get guaranteed good coverage. Or, if you are overseas, you can reduce roaming charges with one SIM for home and one for wherever you are.

Take control of your time by swapping between SIM cards. You can split your phone between business calls, and family and friends. If you’re a busy salesman in Lagos, for example, sometimes you might want to have dinner with your family without taking lots of calls from suppliers or customers.

All the details: Nokia Lumia 800

All about our stunning new smartphone.

The specs; the price; the facts
Or it might even give you the edge. In China one owner of a popular electronics store kept a separate SIM card for his best customers, so that they felt privileged and could always get hold of him.  

Sometimes you just want the best deal to get you where you’re going. Like if you’re travelling to work in Mumbai every day on the train, and you want to swap your SIM card to get the best coverage along the way.  

Or you might be a student in Brazil who needs to manage the cost of the phone by using one number to get onto the internet as cheaply as possible, and the other number for making calls and sending messages. 

You could even be getting your first family phone and sharing it between you, so you can all have your own numbers, contacts and private browsing history. 

There are lots of reasons why a Dual SIM phone makes your life better and easier, and Nokia Dual SIM phones pack more memory, better battery life and far richer SIM change and entertainment features than other Dual SIM products. In fact, a Dual SIM is the perfect way to tailor your phone so that you get the most out of it, and use it as much as you want to. Here are a few Nokia Dual SIM phones to think about this holiday season. They make for great gifts too:

 

Nokia 101Nokia 101:

 

You can keep the conversation going with the Nokia 101 with a Dual SIM that remembers the settings for five different users, a month of standby battery life and an MP3 player. 

You can fit your entire music collection onto a Nokia 101 and it has features like one push playlist creation, shuffle and repeat. Then you can listen to your music on the stereo headset provided, or share with friends over the loudspeaker.

Nokia C2-00:

Chat with your friends, send holiday’s greetings and access Internet to find great ideas for your celebrations – with no battery compromises.

The Nokia C2-00 remembers the settings for up to five separate SIM cards, and it features Easy Swap, which offers you the convenience of changing SIM cards without needing to turn off the phone or remove the battery.

This phone supports a whopping 32GB of memory, so you can store thousands of photos, videos and music files. The 32GB SD card is not in the box, so you have to buy it separately.

 

Nokia X1-01

The Nokia X1-01:

This is a great music phone.

You can store and shuffle thousands of songs, create your own playlist and show all your DJ talent to your friends on the Nokia X1-01.

Then you can play your music out loud and clear for up to 36 hours.

 Nokia C2-03 and Nokia C2-06:

C2-03

Go to new places, find new routes – and take great photos, with these phones.

The Nokia C2-03 and the Nokia C2-06 remember the settings for up to five separate SIM cards, and have Nokia’s Easy Swap feature, so you can put the new SIM card in without needing to reboot.

The Nokia C2-03 and the Nokia C2-06 also have the Nokia Browser which compresses data to lower costs, letting you have as much internet and email as you want for an affordable price. 

The Nokia C2-03 also comes with Nokia Maps preloaded. Local maps are pre-loaded and can be used offline, so you can find out where your friends are, or that shop you’ve been looking for, without breaking the bank. And you can also add all the maps you want via Nokia Suite before going abroad to save your money.

And if you live in India, China, Indonesia and Nigeria you’ll get Nokia Life Tools too.

LONDON, United Kingdom – Here’s our pick of the pics from deadmau5 at Nokia Lumia Live on Monday night. Help yourself and download them from the bottom right of this post under ‘resources’.

Nokia Lumia Live pictures download

Eye, eye . . . someone is watching you 

Nokia Lumia Live pictures download

 Twisting tower . . . amazing effects from Drive Productions

Nokia Lumia Live pictures download

Great shape . . . object flies out of Millbank Tower

Nokia Lumia Live pictures download

Brand building . . . Nokia logo flashes into view

Nokia Lumia Live pictures download

 Closing shot . . . Nokia Lumia 800 in all its glory

LONDON, United Kingdom – Last night Rovio launched a cookbook entitled Angry Birds: Bad Piggies’ Egg Recipes. But we needed to find an expert reviewer…

Mike Cooper, our creative lead here at Conversations by Nokia, is also the man responsible for the famous Playable Angry Birds birthday cake video. So we asked him to spend some time in the kitchen last night filming his children, Sofia and Ben, making a “Shake ‘em shake: Banana alternative”, one of the recipes that can be found in the new Angry Birds: Bad Piggies’ Egg Recipes cookbook. It’s so easy, it’s child’s play.

We’ve all played the game right? Of course, you have. Flinging birds from a catapult into a tower of hungry green pigs in order to rescue your stolen eggs is the aim of the game. But what happens to those eggs that don’t get saved? The pigs stick them in a pan and cook up a treat. And now that Rovio are expanding their product portfolio, you can make your own egg recipes, as Sofia and Ben have above.

Angry Birds cook book

Angry Birds: Bad Piggies’ Egg Recipes costs $19.99 (€19.99), you’ll be able to make delicious recipes – all egg related – such as:

  • Egg Sushi
  • Deviled Eggs
  • Chili Pepper Casserole
  • Egg and Hash Browns
  • Cheese and Egg Soufflé

How do we know they’re delicious? Owner of the Zilli restaurant chain and celebrity chef Aldo Zilli was on hand with a fine selection of cooked recipes from the book. Our favourite tasty treat was the egg sushi.

Egg food by Zilli

Did you know

  • Angry Birds catapulted to success thanks to Nokia and HP who sponsored a competition in 2003 won by Rovio’s founders.
  • The game’s audio effects were recorded by the game’s creators who sat in a studio with a crate of beer making screeching noises late into the night.
  • Angry Birds has since been downloaded 500 million times.
  • Rovio are Nokia’s neighbours in the next office block at Espoo, Finland.

For anybody with children at last night’s event, there was the Angry Birds: The Big Green Doodle Book to keep them occupied. While this isn’t for sale yet, it will be available soon, so get your crayons to the ready and remember to keep within the lines.

Angry Birds game news

While this press event was primarily for the launch of the new books, we did receive some news that there are some new levels coming to your Symbian smartphones very soon. From tomorrow, in fact. That’s as much information as we could gather, so keep your eyes open at the Nokia Store for any more updates.

As is usual at various holiday seasons, Rovio releases new levels depending on the season. These new levels are called Angry Birds Seasons. We expect these new levels will follow the same route and come packaged as a Seasons expansion pack, just like last year.

Rovio are keen to expand their portfolio and spread their wings as far as possible. With Angry Birds now on Series 40 phones from the Nokia Asha range, all current Symbian Anna and Belle phones and the Nokia Lumia 800, it’s evident that this little chick has flown its original nest and made many more nests in many other trees. Fly, Rovio, fly.

PORTLAND, OR, United States – There are certain qualities about the Windows Phone system that I’ve come to really enjoy, and most of them are built into the Nokia Lumia out of the box. Apps and capabilities such as People Hub, combined messaging and Live Tiles are unique factors that set Windows Phone apart. 

However, what about folks who are photo junkies? You know, those who are constantly snapping photos of nature, children and any subject and then uploading them across the web? Windows Phone is appealing to this population, thanks to the capabilities of the camera on the Nokia Lumia 800 and the onboard photo distribution channels on Windows Phone.

Working with your snaps

Once you’ve captured your photo, Windows Phone allows you to do some cool things. To see these capabilities, take out your Lumia 800 and launch the Pictures application and navigate to one of your photos. Click the … in the lower right and the menu is revealed, showing your options. 

AutoFix is a valuable little tool, because it takes a typical photo and balances out colors, brightness and contrast.

However, the real treat is when you want to share a photo. If you have Facebook enabled in Windows Phone, you can share directly to Facebook with one click by selecting “share on Facebook”. Once selected, you can add a description, tag a contact for easy discovery on Facebook and then upload the photo.

 

If your destination isn’t Facebook, click the “Share…” option and more destinations are revealed. The available options include: for every email account, you can email it from that account, you can sent it out via MMS message, to SkyDrive (Microsoft’s great cloud file storage service) and in my case, flickr.

Flickr is enabled on my phone because I have installed the free Flickr application from the Windows Marketplace, and Windows Phone added the option via the Share menu.

So, from the Share menu, I have more than five unique destinations to send my photos to, based on who I wish to share the image with and the use case I’m carrying out. This is a very clever feature perhaps because it makes the workflow so simple.

I really enjoy the Share options because in some cases, I want to email photos of my children to my parents and in others I like to share nature shots to the Flickr community. No matter how I want to share, the built-in options are there for me. This is powerful.

What is your favorite method for sharing and displaying photos online?

LONDON, United Kingdom – deadmau5 stunned fans at the Nokia Lumia Live event on Monday night at Millbank Tower in London – and Conversations by Nokia was there to capture behind the scenes interviews.

Check out our video chats with Nokia Lumia Live Producer Celia Moore and Director Matt Askem who put together the finished deadmau5 video package.

They have covered some of the biggest UK rock festivals, but had never experienced anything on the scale of Monday night’s spectacular event, watched by thousands lining the Thames.

Yet they were ultra-cool as they spoke to us with just 15 minutes before showtime.

We were also given a sneak view inside the outside broadcast van, which gives you an idea of the scale of the operation.

Anyway, take a look for yourself and leave a comment about the Nokia Lumia Live deadmau5 event.

Winning the Nokia 701

LONDON, United Kingdom – At Nokia World 2011, I won myself a Nokia 701 from the Nokia Vending Machine. I checked in using a Nokia 603 by using the on-board NFC function and a few clunks later a white tube appeared from the slot in the bottom of the machine. Much to my disbelief, this tube contained a Nokia 701 and the usual accessories you’d expect to find with a new phone. I’ve been using it for several weeks on and off, and here’s what I think of it.

Hardware

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room here. Hardware wise, it’s very similar to the Nokia C7 that we’ve seen before. It’s the same size and shape with all the same parts in the same place. However, there is a slight difference.

The coloring of the Nokia 701 is much improved. Rather than having the shiny chrome finish, this is a much more sedate experience on the eyes. The matt black finish on the back rolls nicely right around to the front of the phone until it meets the glass touchscreen.

The screen is made of Corning® Gorilla® Glass, the case surrounding the screen and battery cover is made of metal and the rest of the phone is made out of plastic. This leaves the device feeling very sturdy and solid weighing in at 131 grams.

It’s surprisingly slim at 11mm, only one millimetre larger than a jewel CD case, so it sits in my pocket nicely when I’m out and about. When I pull it out of my pocket to make a call it sits in the hand nicely with the unlocking key perfectly situated on the right on the phone. Handy, because I’m right handed. With a flick of my thumb, the Nokia 701 springs into action.

Pulling the Nokia 701 from the white tubeSoftware

The Nokia 701 runs the latest version of Symbian, Symbian Belle. Having used a Nokia N8 for about a year, which I still use today when I go out taking photos, I’ve been very happy with Symbian Anna. Symbian Belle on the Nokia 701 runs very smoothly and that’s down to a combination of the 1 GHz processor and the overall improvements that Symbian Belle brings.

The first improvement I love with the Nokia 701, and therefore Symbian Belle is the ability to add more homescreens – up to six. This means I can cram as many apps, games or anything else I find useful on the front screen, easily accessible with a flick of the finger left or right.

The new email widget is something I admire, too. I use email a lot for work, so being able to keep up to date with what’s important is an absolute must, for me. With a new white background and the increased space to read the subject lines more clearly, I can scroll through 20 of the previous emails from within the homescreen widget. This makes it so easy to find something relevant and read it much more quickly.

Another thing I’m into at the moment is NFC. I really like the idea of being able to touch my phone to something and have it send some information, receive it or to activate something and the Nokia 701 is an NFC-enable phone. While there’s not much I can do with it at the moment, other than pair up a headset or two, or check-in to my office on Foursquare.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a great phone. If I didn’t have easy access to the latest Nokia Lumia 800 I’d have no concerns about using the Nokia 701 as my main phone. I do love to own the latest phone if possible. The Nokia 701 is a sturdy, smooth running, high-featured smartphone that does everything I’d possibly want it too.

LONDON, United Kingdom – Here’s the official Nokia video of last night’s amazing 4D mapping event at Millbank Tower.

Enjoy it, along with the rest of our coverage.

And don’t miss our exclusive behind the scenes Nokia Lumia Live video.

Nokia Lumia Live tweets

LONDON, United Kingdom – Picture this. A mild autumnal night in London and the streets are filling with thousands of people. They’re all gazing up at a tall glassy structure waiting for something to happen, ‘cos they know something is about to kick-off. Murmurs and whispers ripple through the crowd. Those murmurs turn to whoops as a low bass-line ricochets off surrounding buildings and as deadmau5 starts his live gig, cheers fill the air. And the Nokia Lumia Live tweeting starts.

Former Big Brother UK 2011 contestant @RealMaisyJames took to Twitter to express her delight at the party and at deadmau5′s performance:

@RealMaisyJames

@DanKelleway123 loved the performance from both Nokia and deadmau5:

@DanKelleway123

This gig was a unique one, and one that’ll probably never be repeated anytime soon. However @RazDazzz wants more:

@RazDazz

At the end of the Millbank Tower takeover, the Nokia Lumia 800 was projected on to the side of the building. Cheers followed, as @MichaelGillett tweeted:

@MichaelGillett

The maestro himself @deadmau5 tweeted about last night’s event this morning:

@deadmau5_01

The guys behind the Millbank Tower projection were Drive Productions. @Deadmau5 imagines a 2 hour set with the guys, projecting onto the pyramids in Egypt, calling that epic:

@deadmau5_02

Now see #LumiaLive and #Nokia for more Tweets about last night.