Its the war of the Mobile Giants. Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Mobilin – two Linux based operating systems will merge to take on Apple’s iPhone. The new, merged product will be compatible on most mobile devices and smart phones.

The groundbreaking partnership aims to take on Apple’s iPhone, along with other operating systems that span across multiple devices, including Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. But Intel and Nokia said the MeeGo platform will extend beyond smartphones and will be flexible enough to scale to larger devices like full-fledged computers or in-car systems.

Renee James, Intel’s vice president in charge of software, told The New York Times that although Android is “fantastic,” it is also too “specific” and restrictive to run on a wide variety of devices, particularly more complex ones.

“I think it’s important that there are alternatives that are truly open for innovation,” James reportedly said.

Intel previously announced its Moblin operating system for low-cost notebooks running the company’s low-power Atom processor. And Nokia’s Maemo 5.0, first introduced last summer, was expected to play an integral role in the company’s smartphones to come. The move would seem to signal the end of both platforms, though Nokia still intends to sell smartphones based on its Symbian platform.

Another interesting note by the Times: Since the platform will run on ARM-based processors (in addition to Atom), Intel will be lending support to an operating system that benefits one of its competitors. Apple has used ARM processors in its iPhone, and created a custom version of the Cortex-A9 chip, known as the Apple A4, for its recently announced iPad.

Nokia has not yet announced whether it will build any handsets or devices based on Intel’s Atom processor. Both companies will keep their separate application stores: Intel’s AppUp for netbooks, and Nokia’s Ovi software store will remain, despite the partnership.

The first devices running MeeGo, including a new phone from Nokia, are expected to arrive later in 2010.

Nokia and Apple currently have a number of lawsuits directed at each other, making accusations of patent violations on both parties’ behalves. As the iPhone has grown in popularity, Nokia has retained its status as the market leader, but has suffered significant losses at the hands of competitors.

Nokia may be dodging the Mobile World Congress however, inside sources confirm that Nokia is preparing to reveal a new phone at Consumers Electronics Show. We received an email from our source along with several pictures of the new phone. From what we hear, it is christened – Nokia Mystic – for now. Mystic will belong to the E-series family and will have all the features of its predecessor QWERTY devices.

Nokia has decided to maintain the heritage of their award winning Nokia E71 on all their QWERTY devices. Compared to Nokia E63 and Nokia E72, Nokia Mystic sports a full QWERTY keyboard and an extremely compact body.

We have not received complete technical specifications of this phone. From what we heard, it will spot :

• 600MHz processor
• 5 Mega-Pixel Camera
• Panorama image capturing

It is also rumored that Nokia is planning on developing a dual-SIM device. It is speculated that Nokia Mystic will be the first smart phone from Nokia to sport dual-SIM facility. Nokia will most probably announce Nokia Mystic at CES starting today which goes on till sunday. Keep reading TechGiraffe for updates on this phone.

All eyes on Nokia as they introduce Multi Tocuh feature along with other updates.  Recently, at companies “Capital Market Day” for investors,  Nokia was keen on showing off a complete rehash of the flagging mobile OS and they do look mighty impressive. Key highlights include multi-touch (finally), HDMI outputs for HD video, multiple home screens (finally x2), support for NFC (Near Field Communication) and up to 3x faster performance with scrolling increased from 15 to 60fps.

“[We will] use a new optimized graphic architecture with a focus on graphics and responsiveness, showcased beautifully on a large capacitive screen,” said Nokia executive VP of new devices Kai Öistämö. “Later in the year, a completely new visual architecture re-working of the UI will drastically reduce the complexity throughout and bring fresh appeal. We will execute here.”

This is all pretty good news, especially with a mid 2010 timeframe put on the updates, though it does seem odd Nokia is pushing ahead with both Symbian and the hugely promising Maemo rather than sticking to one platform. Could these features also end up on Symbian-based Samsung and Sony Ericsson handsets? Quite possibly if a deal can be struck.

Nokia E 72 was and still is one of my favorite devices of 2009 – Atleast, I would like to believe so after all the hype. After returning the prototype, we had recently got ourselves a Nokia E 72 production piece. Well, we were not as happy as we were after our several “not-so-pleasant” experiences with this device. Nokia is a great phone manufacturing company – No question about it but symbian isn’t that good when it comes to making a good first impression. For example, look at the touch-screen OS for Nokia mobiles. With the right OS, Nokia N97 or any other touch-screen devices from Nokia would have been a super hit but this isn’t the case with Symbian. Lets hope for the best with the induction on Maemo OS.

The production piece of Nokia E 72 came with a major “Crash” problem. Nokia is using Symbian OS 9.3, feature pack 2 on Nokia E72. This is relatively a new patch which makes me very paranoid. Nokia claim to have integrated a 600 MHz processor into this device however, the Chinese made devices doesn’t put a 600 MHz show. It only puts on a hardly 300MHz show (we did not notice this issue while using the prototype). You will see what I am talking about if you run several applications simultaneously in the background and have an active Home screen. Once it goes to the stand-by screen, you would notice that it would take up to 30 seconds to come back to the Home screen. I think that is painfully slow.

Nokia E 72 users have an option to switch between programs by holding down the “Home” button. While moving from one active program to another, you will notice your device freezing at this point – especially if you are receiving an SMS or an Email at the same time. I’d installed several softwares to test how well E72 works and I have noticed that E72 hits 100% processor usage after having less than 5 “heavy duty” programs active. You can install a program called TaskSpy to check this. If you would like to download this program, please click here.

Since I am in meetings most of the times, I have checked the option to “Reply to Call with SMS” option. In many cases while trying to use this feature, the phone continues to ring however, it will not allow me to send the SMS or cancel the call. I’d to restart the phone in this case. It has not been a very satisfactory experience using Nokia E72. I hope Nokia cares to fix these issues during the next wave of releases of the same phone.

From what we noticed, most China made devices are Topaz brown in color. I would suggest all those eager E72 fans to hold on till the end of December and wait for those Finland made devices. If you are facing any other technical difficulties using Nokia E72 other than the ones mentioned here, please feel free to comment and let us know more about the issue.

……………………. AND SOME MORE ISSUES………….

After some time, Today, I got the time to play around with this phone. Well, I was trying to use Nokia messaging over GPRS and it wouldn’t work unless you have Edge enabaled and your network provider supports push mail.

Camera’s interface is like an afterthought. It is missing several vital option that a camera actually needs – Like the option to shift from color mode to black and white etc. I did come across a workaround for this issue though. To shift color mode on E72’s camera, go to camera and go to the “Scene mode” option. Here, you can customize the shooting preferences.

Nokia E72 is supposed to come with an inbuild Instant messaging tool however, that was not the case. I’d to download fring to use this feature. After my experience so far, I think E71 would be a far better option than E72. Option are hidden on this phone as though the intention was never to let the user see those options.

Big hearted Nokia is getting all ready to replace 14 million faulty chargers. The world’s biggest mobile phone maker said its Chinese supplier BYD would cover the costs of recalling the chargers, for which handset makers normally pay around $1. Shares in Nokia were 2.3 percent firmer at 9.04 euros by 1230 GMT and analysts said the impact on Nokia’s brand would be limited. “The plastic covers of the affected chargers could come loose and separate, exposing the charger’s internal components and potentially posing an electrical shock hazard if certain internal components are touched while the charger is plugged into a live socket,” the Finnish firm said.

Three models of charger – AC-3E, AC-3U and AC-4U – made between April and October this year would be affected. Nokia urged users to seek a free replacement (chargerexchange.nokia.com/). BYD Co Ltd’s (1211.HK) battery-making arm BYD Electronic (0285.HK) said it expects no material impact on its financial and operating conditions or its business prospects.

BYD has become an increasingly important supplier to Nokia over the last few years, helped by its wide offering — from components to manufacturing services. “We are not aware of any incidents or injuries relating to these three (models of) chargers,” said Nokia spokesman Doug Dawson. The defective chargers were not sold in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Chile, China and New Zealand.

If you liked the Nokia E71 but have not gotten around to buying one, then your little delay (or wait) has paid off, Nokia is bringing out the E72 is an excellent smart phone that brings all the great things about the E71 but with a few extra features and a redesign of the external hardware that makes the device much easier to use.
The Nokia E72 is definitely one of the better mid-tier 3G smart phones out on the market and there is no other Mobile Phones in this range that we can recommend better. The draw of the E72 lies in its simplistic form yet heavily functional system. Even the old Symbian operating system truly shines here with its direct approach to feature access and navigation (and thanks to the optical track pad, this got even easier –more on that later).
The bottom line is that you get a really good deal with the E72. Owners of the E71 are not hard pressed to upgrade since the hardware is practically the same, and the E71 is already a good phone in its own right. The only comment I can give is that this device feels more like an E71.5 than a full E72. It’s a great upgrade, but not exactly a new model.

Changes from the Original E71

As said, the hardware of the E72 and E71 are practically the same with the E72 getting some pretty nice upgrades. The most significant change is the 5 mega pixel camera. Now this may not matter much to those of you who rarely need high resolution images, but for the hard core mobile phone crowd, this is a significant bonus, allowing for higher resolution images and videos. The nicest addition is without a doubt, the optical track pad.
It works so smoothly, you would want all mobile phones to have this. So far, the only other device with an optical track pad I have used is the BlackBerry Bold 9700. Anyway, for devices that do not have touch screens, the optical track pad is the next best thing. In some cases, it even works better than a touch screen.

More Features and Capabilities

The Nokia E72 is a fully dedicated smart phone, it has a document editor, a fully functional Multiplayer (it supports a lot of file formats), Bluetooth compatibility, a micro USB, and practically everything else you would expect from a modern 3G device. The screen might feel a little small at first, but you will appreciate all 2.36 inches of it once you see how nice the 320 x 240 pixels of resolution appears over a physical keyboard. Browsing the net is available through EDGE, GPRS and HSDPA networks; it also has WiFi support as well.

Battery and GPS
Of course, let us not forget the heavy duty 1500 mAh lithium ion battery, boasting up to 12 hours of continuous talk time, there are very few devices out there that can come close to this. You also get A-GPS with support from Nokia Maps, a digital compass and various GPS application.

At a press event in NewYork on Tuesday, Nokia unwrapped their new 3G Notebook, which will running on Windows 7. This will be available exclusvely on AT&T’s 3g wireless netword at a scbsidized price of $299. Nokia Booklet is not only coming with the Windows 7 OS but also has a battery life that lasts up to 12 hours.

“The $300 price point is insane for a premium product like this,” said Avi Greengart, research director at Current Analysis. “If you look at other Netbooks in this category that sell for about the same price you get four or four and a half hours of battery life. This will easily give you over eight hours of battery life with all radios turned on.”

First impressions of the new Booklet 3G have been positive. The extended battery life, sharp screen resolution, and slick, lightweight design are all impressive, according to many reviewers. But the PC market has notoriously seen tight profit margins. And the new Netbook category is already flooded with competition.

So what is Nokia, a company that sells more than 400 million mobile phones a year doing, in the PC business?

Nokia executives say that the Netbook device category is perfectly suited for Nokia. The company says that it fits solidly in line with the Nokia’s overall strategy.

“Our company is about connecting people,” John Hwang, general manager of connected computers at Nokia, said in an interview at the press event. “We connected the world’s first billion people through the cell phone. And the next billion will be connected via computing devices like a PC.”

Hwang went on to say that the line between a phone and a computer is quickly blurring. Smartphone devices, such as the Apple iPhone or Nokia’s own N-series devices, now provide full HTML browsers for Internet browsing. They provide e-mail and Internet search. And because they are connected to high-speed 3G wireless networks, these devices offer even more new Internet-enabled applications.

But smartphones are still too small to really get much work done on them.

Meanwhile, laptop PCs have shrunk in size. Cloud computing has reduced the need for huge amounts of data storage. As a result, the new Netbook or mini-PC category has emerged to provide corporate road warriors and other people wishing to access the Net on the go a lightweight alternative to lugging around heftier laptops. Service providers are further driving the trend by making these new laptops more affordable and usable by bundling 3G wireless service with them.

Service providers see Netbooks as the first of many non-cell-phone devices that they hope will generate more service fees for their wireless networks.

“The Booklet 3G lines up well with AT&T’s strategy,” said David Petts, the Nokia vice president heading up the AT&T account. “People increasingly want to get content on multiple screens. And this is one more screen and device. So it’s part of that macro trend. And it lines up nicely with Nokia’s strategy of connecting people.”

Glenn Lurie, president of emerging devices for AT&T, who was also at the Nokia press event, said that the Netbook market is hot. He referenced reports that indicate that more than 20 million Netbooks could be sold worldwide in 2009. While this pales in comparison to the overall mobile phone market, it’s significant enough to become a decent business for Nokia, and it’s the beginning of a much broader business for carriers, such as AT&T.

Analyst says move makes sense
But the real reason that Nokia is getting into the PC business is likely because it has to.

“It makes perfect sense for Nokia to get in this market,” Current Analysis’ Greengart said. “The PC guys are all getting into their business.”

Indeed, PC competitors have already begun entering its mobile phone market with smartphones. The most challenging competitor to Nokia so far is Apple with its three generations of iPhone. In a little over three years, the iPhone has revolutionized the mobile market. It has set a new standard for “smartphones,” pushing companies, such as Nokia, to develop more advanced touch-screen phones as well as easier to use user interfaces and more customer-friendly application downloading stores.

This past year, Nokia has lost market share to Apple in the smartphone category. And competition is expected to get more intense in the coming year, as Apple develops more products in this market.

Apple has not yet announced a Netbook of its own. The company’s MacBook laptops are priced much higher than most PC laptop competitors, which makes them completely out of range for customers looking for less powerful and less expensive Netbooks.

But some analysts, such as Greengart, think that Apple will take the same strategy as Nokia when it finally introduces a mini-laptop.

“I predict that Apple will enter this market, like Nokia has, with a premium product that is priced in the $300 range,” he said. “Today, the least expensive MacBook is $800 to $900. There is a steep jump to that when you are looking at a subsidized $300 product.”

Apple already allows its iPhones to be subsidized by AT&T in exchange for requiring customers to sign a two-year service contract. So it’s not much of a stretch to think they would follow the same strategy with a Netbook.

Apple may be the most threatening nontraditional competitor Nokia faces, but it’s not the only PC maker trying to steal some of Nokia’s smartphone business. Other PC makers, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Acer have or will soon introduce new smartphones.

The one thing that could derail growth of this new product segment is the cost of the wireless service that these devices are bundled with. Without subsidies from wireless carriers, the devices are not much cheaper than full-fledged PCs. But with the subsidy comes a two-year service contract. AT&T’s wireless data customers, who pay $60 a month for up to 5GB of service per month, spend a total of $1,440 in service fees over their two-year contracts.

For customers, who most likely already have a cell phone data plan, the extra $60 a month is a hefty charge. And it could discourage some consumers from signing up.

“There could be some service contract fatigue,” Greengart said. “But there are some segments of the market that this will work well for.”

AT&T’s Lurie said that there will likely be more pricing options available for Netbook subscribers in the future.

“We will be announcing some other service plans in the mini-computing market,” he said. “What we’ve said all along is that for this market to take off, consumers will need more choice around rate structures.”

But for now, the $60 plan is the only plan available for the new Nokia device. That said, AT&T executives have said previously that they expect to introduce other business models, which could one day allow consumers to pay for one subscription and use multiple devices or a plan that allows the cost of the plan to be bundled into the price of the device. This is a business model that is being used with electronic book readers.

Nokia’s executives said they see no problem with the $60 a month service charge. And they believe a market exists for the Booklet 3G at this price point.

“We don’t have concerns about the service pricing, Nokia’s Petts said. “We think the device offers a lot of value to customers. The long batter life and the fact that you can jump between Wi-Fi and 3G wireless are important differentiators. I personally am ditching my old laptop as quickly as I can to use the Booklet.”

Recently, we were able to get our hands on a Nokia 5730. Nokia 5730 reminds me to the First Nokia Xpress Music device. This devices qwerty keyboard and several other features reminded me of Nokia E75.

Nokia 5730 Xpress music edition runs on Symbian S60 3rd Edition, feature pack 2. When I knew I was going to be using 3rd edition phone, I was quite excited. Once I got the phone, I installed several applications on it. I wanted to know how well an ARM 11 359 MHz processor would handle this situation. This device is backed by a 128 MB RAM and 256MB ROM which made handling several processes at the same time was like a walk in the park however, at times the processor was struggling for breath. You will not see this problem if you are using a Nokia 5630 Xpress music edition because it is using an ARM 11 600 MHz process.

The phone supports 3G, WiFi and GPRS. 5730 comes with a  symbian browser which can be used to view some heavy pages. We faced no issues using youtube and several other websites however, we did run into trouble as soon we tried using our flash site which we had created for testing. The GPS in this phone is rather lousy and can get you lost  if you are going to rely on it. We saw a delay of around 30 seconds while using the GPS connection and this was not a network issue.

Another very disappointing decision made by the Nokia was not to include Nokia messaging to this phone. I was unable to figure out why they would remove such a feature from a phone. The Keypad on this phone was very tough to use and the navigation keys were almost useless. The qwerty keyboard was very E75-ish however, qwerty keypad looked excellent in dark will all the lights on it. Nokia 5730 comes preloaded with several social networking applications like Facebook, Hi5, Widows messaging etc.

Screen measures around 2.4 inches with a 240×320 resolution. Since most Nokia devices come with 16 million colors, it is possible to use this phone in direct sunlight. 5730’s camera is more like the E75’s camera. This phone also comes with a 3.2 MegaPixel camera with Flash. The lens is Carl-Zeiss and gives you amazing clarity. Images at close ranges are very accurate with all the details present in it. Since this phone was tagged as a music device, We tried experimenting with the music features on this phone and the results were rather disappointing. The loudspeaker on this phone is very treble-ish and the music sounds very sharp on this phone. THis phone tends to add bass to the music which makes it even terrible. Unlike Nokias previous devices, this phone comes with 3.5 mm headset jack which gives you an idea of how good/bad the qwality can be.

After using this phone for several days, I realised how much i missed my E 71. Well, like they say, if you have to enjoy your wifes beauty, look at her through your neighbours windows. I was able to realise how much i miss Nokia E 71 only when I used Nokia 5730 Xpress music

Mobile Phones have gone from a mere communication device to “All-in-one” device. If you look at a mobiles back in 1998 or 2000, all you got was what you expect from a mobile – Text,  make/receive calls. Along with the original purpose in mind, current mobiles are concentrating on entertainment and they are doing everything to make things better in this area. Music has become an indispensable part of our lives.

Nokia had recently send one of their super cool-super sexy Nokia bluetooth headset with 3.5mm jack and Nokia HS-44 stereo headset for review. That was on device I loved using while listening to music. There is nothing about this device that make your jaws drop but it does what it was designed to do.

Let me get the cons out of the way so I can discuss about the features that made me love this device without actually having the cons playing with my brain. The bluetooth module on BH-214 is rather heavy and this creates a huge problem if you are wearing a t-shirt and if you are trying to clip this device to your t-shirt. That was the only thing I could see as a “problem-causer”.

BH-214 headset module sports a LED indicator, microphone, charger port and 3.5mm jack. The audio buttons are on its front side, along with the send key, while the power on/off and volume rocker are on either side of the gadget. We have to say the Nokia BH-214 is made of proper materials and feels really nice to touch. There is a small clip on the back of this device to attach the device to your clothing.

when you looking for a headset, the first thing people look for is the comfort, audio quality and battery life. This device fails when it comes to comfort but when it comes to quality and battery life, it is an awesome device. I was using the HS-44 with an E71. Usually, I hear this static noice when I try to plug in any headset. This didn’t happen when I used HS-44 and the audio quality on calls really suprised me. You will not notice a problem using this device in a windy or noisy enviorment. The battery life is also phenominal with 8 hours of contious talk time and 7 hours of non-stop audio playback. As a whole, I was very impressed with the performace of Nokia BH-214 as a wireless headset.