Straight from the Horse's Mouth!

This is what Axel Meyer, Head, Nokia's design team, has to say about the almost perfect mobile computer: the Nokia N97. He clearly mentions how quality was a big parameter, and how the focus was not on Nokia connecting people, which it does nevertheless, but was on People Connecting People. The sharing of applications made by people themselves, the sharing of multimedia, is of course brilliantly facilitated by Ovi as an interface and a platform. The focus also is on 'Your' phone, 'Your' web as he emphasizes. And the widgets are definitely going to go a long way in Nokia's futuristic outlook in the next few years!

Whats your Widget..!!

At a glance what you will notice on the N97’s huge screen is something new to S60,the feeling is more like when you’ve shifted from XP to Vista,you will see Onscreen widgets.Now unlike the old (almost same on each and every s60 3rd Edition device)home(Standby) screen,the new screen is customizable on the N97,you can decide what to see and what to avoid,the new OS will allow the user to customise the home screen widgets as you wish with easy interactive touch movements.

What is a Widget?

A widget is a time-saving element of the device’s user interface, a visual building block that provides an easily accessible single interaction point with an application, which holds and processes data. There are thousands of types of widget.

The team behind the Nokia N97 have launched a competition to find the most creative, innovative and useful widget to stick on the new device’s home screen. The winner will receive a production-mode N97 ahead of public release. The widget will also be fully produced so you can spot your handiwork on N97s world wide! Luring enough?

How to Participate?

Download the design package, design your widget and upload it for others to rate. Keep visiting the site to log your opinions on others' offerings as the ten highest-rated designs will go in front of a panel of judges selected from the Nokia N-series team. The panel will choose the best home screen widget based on creativity, usability and quality of design. And programming skills are not required, even a novice like me can do it!

Prize: The winning designer will receive a Nokia N97 pre-loaded with a working version of the winning widget
Deadline: The closing date for the competition is February 27, 2009. The winner will be announced on this site on March 13, 2009.

Here are some real nice ones submitted by amateurs like you and me, and you can find more at the competition website. Inspiring enough?

Submit yours for a chance to win the Nokia N97 and good luck! Of course, I am making mine right now!

Eye Candy...!!

As demanded by you guys, these are some sample pictures which have been taken from an N95 which also has a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens. The actual size of these pictures is far far bigger than what blogspot can accomodate on the page, thus for your convenience, I have given links on every picture to click and lead you to the actual size.

Pure treat for the eyes, isn't it?

Search Google for more and more images, or lazy souls like me can click here to directly visit this website with many luring pictures clicked by an N95! Can it get better? Yes it just did!

Picture Perfect...!!

Talk about the 416×352 resolution of the N80 and N90, and for such a long time, successive flag ship phones had to endure with 320 x 240. Nokia have understood the importance of fitting a High-end cam into their flagship device while many other touch device competitors forgot to do so.Also this is a perfectly timed decision taken to keep the existing Nokia multimedia fans sticked to the N-series in the future too.

The N97 has 640×360! Not Nokia’s highest, the internet tablets have that point; but it’s a small leap in the right direction. It’s higher than the iPhone’s 480×240 but MORE IMPORTANTLY, the aspect ratio is TRUE 16:9 widescreen. This is absolutely fantastic because which means you have a more effective use of the 3.5 inch display when viewing widescreen videos, i.e. No/less BLACK BARS. The move to true widescreen is also important considering YouTube’s evolution to 16:9 true widescreen, so newer YouTube videos can be seen in their full non-letter-glory that you would get when viewing on a standard 4:3 screen.


Combined with the sizable collection of videos the N97 can carry, (if a 90minute DivX video takes around 700mb, that’s at least 22 movies stored on a 16GB memory card alone! 68 films if you want to fill up the entire memory!)makes the N97 quite practical portable video player . Fingers crossed the N97 meets the 4.5 hours of video playback. This possibly means 270 minutes giving you enough time to finish any single part of the Lord of the Rings and still have juice left for other applications.

Higher pixels means also means richer visual experience for viewing photos and browsing the internet. You’ll see more of your photos not just physically, but more detail, and this is especially useful when browsing the internet as you can read the small font text without necessarily having to zoom in as required on lower resolution devices.

I’m sure it will be a great pleasure to do the Photo/Videography on a 3.5 inch widescreen camera view,I just can’t wait to have that experience.Also the camera controls will be more maneuverable with the touch controls than using the navigational D-pad to scroll along the menus.T camera would produce more realistic and Lively images with the help of Carl Zeiss lens and picture color renditions.

Okay mobile movie lovers,its time to setup your budgets for mid 2009.

Know thy world, coz they know you!

The much talked about Nokia N97 brings with it an even more talked about concept: the concept of 'social location', known as 'So-Lo' in popular terms.

With integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, the Nokia N97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. The Nokia N97 phone makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their 'status' and share their 'social location' as well as related pictures or videos.

According to Nokia, the N97 'social location' feature makes it possible for a user to let their friends know exactly where they are simply by auto-updating social networks with real time geographical info.

Check this amazing video out and you'd know how Nokia has successfully reduced the line between real and virtual world. And am sure you'd want to be there...

Nokia also rolled out Nokia Maps 3.0 in beta well as Ovi's online mapping feature. The free service lets you plan trips on your PC and sync them with your mobile phone. The Nokia 3.0 upgrades include high-resolution aerial images, 3D landmarks for 216 cities, terrain maps, and route overview when planning routes and also on Nokia’s Drive turn-by-turn directional system. Users will also have access to real-time traffic information in select countries with included safety camera alerts. Taking a hint from events companies like 'Eventful', Nokia will also release a WCities real-time events guide to keep you up-to-date regarding events in your immediate location.

So am sure they know you, and where you are by now! With an N97, now its your turn..