GLOBAL – This morning the team over at Nokia Beta Labs released a new version of the Nokia Magnifier app. A sharper, smoother-running update, this latest beta release of Nokia Magnifier better exploits the auto-focus camera feature on many S60 devices such as the N96, N95, N95 8GB, N82, N73, E90, E71, E66, to enable you to easily enlarge hard-copy small print.
Harnessing the often underplayed features of a device is crucial for driving innovation – an ethos that has been wonderfully embraced by many mobile innovators over the past year. So with traditional household tools such as the magnifying glass and spirit level (click to see it working on N95) becoming available on devices, how far can this go?
Okay, so you can’t digitize a screwdriver, weighing scales or a rolling pin… or could you, with say the Morph concept in mind? Perhaps that is stretching things too far. Maybe you disagree. So, how far can or should this breed of digitized traditional tool be taken. Is there a point where what’s practical and useful steps into the realm of the ridiculous?
Read on for more and to watch videos of Nokia Magnifier and the spirit level on N95. Plus, get stuck in and leave your opinions.
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GLOBAL – On witnessing the unveiling of the N79 earlier today, I was immediately intrigued by perhaps its most subtly elegant talent – when you dress it in a different coloured cover it automatically changes the on-screen theme to match. Now, this mightn’t seem like moment of mobile epiphany, however this seamless marriage and morphing of tactile tailored exteriors and their corresponding digital information has ignited a spark and poses a question – could the physical customization and personalization of a handset be automatically echoed by the content, software and services that populate it?
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About 10 years ago I had one of those accessories for my phone that enabled me to have two sim cards in the same device. Switching between the two (my work and my personal mobile accounts) was a pain, requiring me to restart the device whenever I wanted to change sim. Pretty quickly, I convinced my then bosses that we’d all be better off if I had just one phone. And that should be my work phone. And they should pay the bill. Well, I was on call most weekends.
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INTERNATIONAL – There are some ties to the physical world that we just can’t seem to shake off, like the humble old business card. Appreciating that, the new Multiscanner business card reader built into the E71 and E66 enables you to take a photo of card and then squirt the info electronically into your address book. You might need to change the odd bit of info here or there – the tech used is called Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and can sometimes be more of an art than a hard science – but it will do the bulk of the heavy lifting for you.
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ESPOO, Finland – We, sort of, regularly scan a bunch of top news feeds related to Nokia and general mobile stuff (see ‘Sites we follow’ further down in the right column) and bookmark the more interesting items (see Our picks – eyes right!). It’s our way of showing you what things are sparking our interest and what thoughts might work their way into an article or interview.
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LONDON, England – Engadget’s reaction to the introduction of the new E71 was simply “one of the thinnest phones we’ve ever seen exit the doors of the Finnish giant”. Whilst Cnet said both the E66 and E77 “bring with them a modernized look and a fresh set of features”. Information Week reckons the new phones look “classy” whilst Symbian Guru acknowledged what everyone else was thinking when it wrote “Nokia has finally officially announced what has been quite possibly the most-publicized-without-being-acknowledged-officially handset in the history of the mobile phone industry”. All in all then, yesterday was a pretty good day. Soren Petersen was confident taking the stage for yesterday’s launch and so he should have been. The new devices look cracking. Not even a tricky question from the Irish Times regarding the iPhone could throw him.
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LONDON, England – Eseries devices have undergone a serious design evolution since the introduction of the E51 and E65, a pair of phones that in essence acted as springboards for the bolder steel-clad designs embodied in the new E66 and E71 handsets unveiled earlier today.
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LONDON, England – Earlier today I managed to get some playtime with the new faces of Eseries, the E66 and E71. In the flesh they really do feel like an evolution for Eseries in terms of design and the materials used – something I spoke to Valtteri Eroma (Head of Eseries design) and Benoit Rouger (Senior Industrial Designer) earlier on (I’m cutting together the video interview right now).
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GLOBAL – This morning the team over at Nokia Beta Labs released a new version of the Nokia Magnifier app. A sharper, smoother-running update, this latest beta release of Nokia Magnifier better exploits the auto-focus camera feature on many S60 devices such as the N96, N95, N95 8GB, N82, N73, E90, E71, E66, to enable you to easily enlarge hard-copy small print.
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