There’s a long list of reasons why you should be interested, including …

1. You can watch it at home and you’re in charge of the refreshments… Beer maybe?
2. You can watch it in bed, in your most comfortable PJs.
3. You’ll be able to convince your grandchildren that you were there.
4. You’re looking for originality.
5. You’ll be able to stream it on your Lumia.
6. You want to join the conversation.
7. …

We can go on, but this blog is called Conversations for a reason. Help us fill out the list by adding a comment below. Why will you zoom in on July 11^th?

The webcast begins at 11am EDT. Join us here on Conversations.

The company is the leading mobile phone manufacturer in the report.

Taking ninth position among the world’s 50 leading brands, Nokia is also commended as a ‘top riser’ for its eco-efforts, marking what Interbrand views as a notable improvement in the company’s performance since the last time the scores were compiled.

The report notes:

“Being green” remains a core business driver for the Nokia brand […] Greener product manufacturing and lifecycle management are clear to see.

Today, all parts of Nokia phones are recyclable, and every model has an “Eco” profile, with “Eco Hero” devices indicating its greenest products.

The report concludes by listing some of the other recent accolades Nokia has received in this area:

…including the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics, the Carbon Disclosure Project, Forbes’ list of the “World’s Most Sustainable Companies,” and Enough Project’s 2012 “Taking Conflict Out of Consumer Gadgets: Company Rankings on Conflict Minerals” report.

You can discover more about Nokia’s policies and practises for sustainability at the ‘People and Planet’ section of the Nokia.com website.

We covered the green credentials of our current eco-hero smartphone, the Nokia Lumia 820, much of which applies to all our phones, in an article last October.

image credit: brewbooks

You aren’t just stuck with what other people have chosen, though. You can have extra free music fun with your own Mixes by choosing ‘create a mix’ and seeding the service with up to three different artists. This will bring you exactly the sort of music you want from the full pool of Nokia Music’s massive library.

But there’s a bit more to it than that, and applying a bit of forethought will improve the quality and accuracy of custom Mixes a lot.

Here are nine tips to help you get what you want:

1. Put in similar artists. Maybe you like all kinds of music. But if you create a Mix with JS Bach, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Gnarls Barkley, you’ll probably end up with a musical mess. Those artists have got nothing in common, so you aren’t giving the service enough clues about the style you want to listen to right now.
2. Make as many Mixes as you like. To continue the example above, Gnarls Barkley, Cee Lo Green and Danger Mouse would work a lot better as the seeds for a modern electric soul Mix. Then make separate Mixes to satisfy your love of Baroque and 70s rock.
3. You can keep a bunch of custom Mixes ready on your Start screen. To do this, create your Mix, start it playing, then bring up the menu from the bottom of the screen and choose ‘pin mix to start’.
4. In the same way, you can download custom Mixes for offline use, the same as with curated ones. Start your custom Mix then choose ‘make available offline’ from the menu. With the free version of Nokia Music, there’s a limit of four offline Mixes, but this restriction is removed with Nokia Music+.
   
5. Avoid artists whose musical style has changed a lot over time. The Rolling Stones are a fine band, but the group who recorded Beggars Banquet are quite a different act to the guys who created Voodoo Lounge – and the service can’t guess which Stones you want. The same goes for acts like Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Radiohead.
6. You don’t have to use all three slots. If you want to listen to music by and similar to Rihanna, then there’s no need to add Beyonce and Britney to fill up the slots. Go straight for what you want.
7. Find similar artists to the ones you like with tools like musicroamer, last.fm, tastekid and music-map. These are great if you have a bad memory or if you’re exploring a genre that you don’t know very well.
8. The pre-made Mixes are a great way of finding new acts, of course – just like normal radio! But you can also use them as the basis of something new. When a song comes along that you like, you can bring up the bottom menu and select ‘more by this artist’ to start a new custom Mix that features the chosen artist and more music that’s like it. From there, you can save or pin it, the same as normal.
9. Experiment and play! There are no charges or limits with Nokia Music. Make a Mix and try it out. If you don’t like it, you can try new combinations for as long as you like.

That’s everything we’ve learned about making better Mixes. Any tips you’d recommend to us, so we can make this list into a round ten?

image credit: Ralph-Thomson

So a little bit of team effort is required, or the ability to grab hold of an expert on the sort of apps you want and get their opinion.

This better process for surfacing good quality apps off the back of trusted recommendations is what Nokia’s new App Highlight Social Beta is all about.

There’s a lot going on in this innovative app, with no fewer than five main screens.

The first is the ‘Featured’ screen. Here you can browse through lists created by other people to take you to the best of every micro-category you can think of, from golfing apps to ‘mobile pet games’ (honest). Thankfully, there’s a search to get you through the dozens of lists that have already been created. You can also ‘thank’ (i.e. vote for) the list and its creator from this screen.

The second is the ‘Apps feed’ screen. You get to follow individuals and teams in App Highlights Social Beta, similar to Twitter, and this screen is where all the recommendations from the people you follow appear.

It’s also handy that you can zoom in to look at the details and screenshots of apps you’re interested in without leaving App Highlight Social Beta – only when you commit to downloading something are you switched to the Windows Phone Store. You can also ‘relist’ apps from this level. You might want to create a personal list of ‘apps to look into’, for example, while you’re browsing App Highlights Social Beta, then download them en-masse later.

You can add your own lists, too, of course, which you do from the ‘My Profile’ screen. The ‘Spotlight’ screen shows off some of the top new finds in the Store. And lastly, the ‘Leaderboards’ screen shows you the most-thanked lists, users and the top apps, based on the number of times they are listed across the board.

App Highlight Social Beta was launched in Beta Labs earlier this week and is available for download via its project page. It is a beta app, so it might not always work as expected, and might change significantly over the course of its future development. Do leave your feedback for the developers on the page.

image credit: U.S. Army

Desktop version for Windows 7 or Windows 8

Full screen version for tablets and Windows 8

Why upgrade? Well, there’s the normal bevy of fixes and enhancements under the hood, but also a couple of feature enhancements, too.

On the full-screen version, there’s a new mechanism to transfer documents to and from your phone. Personally, I’d use Skydrive for this purpose (or quite often, good old email), but more options are always welcome.

On your desk

There’s a bit more going on with the newest version of the desktop app.

The first thing to note happens when you first start the app. You get the choice to use either iTunes or Windows libraries as the basis for synchronising media, including music, movies and podcasts. This isn’t a permanent decision, though. You can alter your synchronisation source in the ‘settings’ menu at any time.

The second key feature is that you now have more options when it comes to podcasts. If you go down the route of synchronising with Windows libraries, because you don’t use iTunes, then you can still sync podcasts that have been saved to your hard drive by synchronising the relevant folder.

And finally, like the full screen app, the desktop app will now detect and allow you to install any future updates to the software without visiting the web site.

There’s one last option, too. Your Windows Phone shows up as a connected drive in Explorer, with folders for music, documents and so forth. You can simply cut and paste media to and from your phone if you want to.

Not sure which option you need? Microsoft also has an online wizard to show you how to achieve what you want.

The Lumia 925 has a beautifully crafted design with a polished metal frame, which not only looks great, but also allows the phone to be thinner without losing any robustness.

The phone also features a 4.5-inch AMOLED display that lets you enjoy your content in vivid detail, even in direct sunlight, from almost any viewing angle.

As a surprise, we’re now introducing a beta version of a long anticipated feature, the clock on the standby screen. After receiving a large number of requests to bring back this favourite feature, it now comes as part of the Nokia Glance Screen, included first on the Lumia 925.

The Nokia Glance Screen also notifies you when your battery level is low, and you can switch on a night mode for reduced glare in the dark. Double tapping the screen will make it easier to unlock the phone, even when the phone is on a wireless charging stand, car holder or on the table. As it currently is a beta version, you can always select to turn the Nokia Glance Screen off in Settings by selecting ‘display & touch’ and ‘glance screen’.

Once the commercial version of the Nokia Glance Screen is released, it will become available to most Windows Phone 8 powered Lumia smartphones in conjunction with the upcoming Lumia Amber software update. 

Despite its slim (8.5mm) body, the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera boasts the same clever Optical Image Stabilisation technology as the Nokia Lumia 920. This provides a great cure for shaky hands, and together with the most advanced lens technology and latest Nokia imaging software, it also lets you to take better shots in low light.

Additionally, the new Smart Camera app, with features like Best Shot and Action Shot extends your photo opportunities with amazing effects. To make even more out of the Nokia Smart Camera, you can also download the Motion Focus feature from the Store to create more stunning pictures.

This week, we’ll be revealing more about how to make the most of your new Nokia Lumia 925, answering your questions about the phone, and showing off some of the innovative software features that are new to the range. Stay tuned.

We’d like to answer your questions about the phone, and have extracted a promise from product manager Arja-Liisa Heikkilä that she’ll answer your questions right here on Conversations.

So today, leave your questions in the comments. We’ll get you the answers and publish them in a follow-up post very soon.

Let’s get started

To get started, and save repetition, here are a few we gathered from the Lumia 925’s launch.

• What sort of glass is used for top cover of the camera lens?

• Why only a dual-core processor?

• Does the Lumia 925 come with microphones that support HAAC recording?

• I have suffered with getting dust under the screen with other smartphones. Will this happen with the Nokia Lumia 925?

There are some questions we can’t answer. This is either because we don’t have the answer at the moment, or because doing so is against company policy:

• When will it be available in [country]? These timings are revealed country by country closer to availability and are often  beyond our control.

• Will the Nokia Lumia 925 come out with [undisclosed feature/colour]? We can’t answer questions about unannounced products, colours or features.

• Is it better than the [competitor’s device]? Of course, the answer is ‘yes’, in our opinion. But it would be more credible for you to seek the answers from third-party reviewers or test it out yourself.

So, bearing those things in mind, ask away!

I’ve been using it as a second phone for a few weeks now. To be completely transparent about this, I couldn’t use it as my main device: work commitments make mobile email essential. So how’s it been? It’s been great. But let me pick out the things that really stood out.

1. Size matters. I had kind of forgotten how nice it is to have a tiny phone that you can carry without even noticing. Twice now, I’ve had to save my Nokia 105 when I threw the shirt that was carrying it into the laundry. I am thinking the compactness might particularly appeal to women who need to carry everything they need for a night out in a small clutch purse.
2. Loud and clear. This might be a small phone, but it’s really loud. This is very much an intentional part of the design, because in the countries that the Nokia 105 is aimed at, there’s a lot of noise from the hustle and bustle of daily life – more so than your average town or city, so clear-sounding calls matter. Extra bonus points, though, for the ring being perfectly audible when the phone is in my bag.
3. Battery life. What normally happens = I realise I didn’t charge my phone yesterday; bring on anxiety about whether my battery will go flat today. What happens with the Nokia 105 = It eventually gets down to one bar and I realise that I can’t actually remember where I left the charger from the last time it needed a top-up, it’s been that long.
4. You can do a lot with less. It’s really nice, of course, to be able to sync your calendar and contacts with the cloud and all that fancy stuff. But the reality is that – email aside – about 95 per cent of my own phone life is that I call and text the same 6-7 numbers. And sometimes *not* getting emails anytime, anywhere is a real breath of fresh air…
5. Snake is still great. It may be a little while before AAA games like Sims Medieval make their way onto a device at the price point the Nokia 105 reaches. But that doesn’t mean it’s no fun. On the contrary, with its simple, compelling gameplay and perfect optimisation for mobile devices, Snake has provided all I need for a little downtime while I’m on the move.

There’s more to the Nokia 105 than this, of course. I haven’t actually used the calendar or the FM radio, for example, except to see how they work. But it remains amazing how much phone you can get for $20. Several friends – who didn’t realise you could still buy a simple, no-nonsense phone – have asked me about it and plan to get one because they don’t actually want or need a smartphone. A big battery life is worth more than apps, screen inches or megapixels to a lot of people.

This looks gorgeous, and adds robustness to the phone. But what’s worth noting is that it does not impact on the strength of the signal you’ll be able to receive on the phone.

On the Lumia 925, the aluminium ring around the phone actually act as parts of the phone’s radio antenna system. The main antenna is located in the bottom area of the phone and two more towards the top of the phone. There are then stripes that separate the antennas from the other parts of the metal ring.

Nokia-specific technology incorporated within the antenna solution maximises its use of radio bands – whether you’re on GSM, WCDMA or LTE networks. It will also adjust the ‘balance of power’ between the antennas according to how you’re holding your phone.

The end result is that you’ll get equally good radio performance out of the Lumia 925 as you would from a wholly polycarbonate phone, plus the most important benefit in the form of a stunning design.

Of course, if you deliberately use two hands to cover every edge of the phone, you’ll manage to reduce the signal. But that’s true of any other phone, too. You may also find it a little tricky to operate the buttons that way!

So relax, and enjoy Nokia Lumia 925 and its sleek design, any way you like.

We’ve taken comparison shots using the Nokia Lumia 925 and a number of its closest competitors, the same low-lit scenes using the automatic settings for all the pictures. We’ve avoided the temptation to make comments, but we think that the differences are pretty striking.

Tea for two

Sony Xperia Z

iPhone 5

Samsung Galaxy S4

HTC One

Nokia Lumia 925

We’ll show you what difference the Nokia Lumia Amber Update makes to the photos from the Nokia Lumia 920 in the coming weeks…