Nokia World 2010: The Keynotes

Nokia Connections was a sold out experience this year in jolly old London. The first day started of with a rather light yet insightful keynote from Niklas Savander, the Exec. VP, Marketing.

Even though it may seem like the company is falling a little behind in the Smartphone market their stats show 260,000 smartphones being sold every day beating out Apple and Android devices. Savander also made a joke about how stylish, functional and well designed the new devices are.... irrespective of how they're held. Steve Jobs must be cringing in anger right now.

Savander also mentioned how Ovi Maps has a bit of a leg up from Google Maps thanks to their extensive support for Pedestrian usage and Transit systems. Ovi Maps also adds quite a bit more to the game with speed limit warning, safety road camera information  as well as information about public transport. Right now Ovi Maps caters to 78 countries in 46 languages. Nokia estimates that by  2013, at least 800 mill people will be using GPS enabled devices.

Savander also announced that tee wold be no Meego product launches at this Nokia World. Tsk Tsk. However, we can expect some devices by the end of the year.
Nokia was also hosting a contest for their C-series devices on Facebook. All entrants will have to 'pimp' the handsets as much as they can via an FB 'Party' and the winner will receive a spanking new C-Series device. That's not all, they'll also get 20 more for their good buddies who helped them win.

Savander final words were simply - Nokia is back. Hmmm.... Could be.

Next up was Anssi Vanjoki, Exec VP, Mobile Solutions who introduced the audience to the all new range of Smartphones being announced at Nokia World 2010. His statements proclaimed just how powerful the Nokia 'Connection' was the world over and how the  smartphone from Nokia is designed to be a device for everyone. Of course the new devices that were announced, while very feature rich, would not necessarily be ones that everyone would be able to afford.

First on the list was the Nokia N8, Nokia's iPhone, if you will.  There was a lot of take about the N8 which is what Nokia is expecting to take them to the next level in the new age Smartphone market. We've been thorough this before so I won't delve into it again. For information check out the Bloggers meet article here, where we got a preview of the device. Although I checked it out here as well, I have to say that I'm still quite impressed with the new functionality the updated OS brings to the table. Next up were the new C-Series devices - the C6 and the C7.

The C6 is a sleek looking handset Next up is the Nokia C6. it's their next gen 8MP camera phone. It's equipped with a CBD - ClearBlack Display that is designed to help with reducing reflection for optimum viewing when you're outdoors. This is going to be very handy. 

The C7 is also a slick looking handset. It's the higher end device in this series as it comes with a larger display and 8Gb of internal space. AN 8MP camera is also on board. The device also features dual microphones for noise cancellation.

What's quite unique about these new devices is USB-on-the-go. This enables you to plug any USB device into the handset and browser files, play media from the external drive etc.
The Fourth and final device that was announced here at Nokia World 2010 is the much awaited next gen Communicator, the E7. If you were wondering how long it would be before we saw a new Communicator device, it's here and it's gorgeous!  Just to show us how it all began, a clip of the 9000 Communicator showcased in the movie The Saint with Val Kilmer was shown, That reminds, note to self, watch that movie again. The E7 looks very much like the N8 with a slide out QWERTY keypad. It does however have a business like look and feel to it and the slide out-propped up display like the N97's makes viewing real easy on the eyes and neck. Free Ovi services are on board, with MS exchange, QuickOffice... the works. They're saying it's the best Biz class handset they've ever launched till date.

These new devices are designed for the multitasker who really likes his job. We saw a live demo on the N8 where about 20 active tasks were running and the handset still manged to play a 720p video file quite easily thanks to the dedicated GPU and powerful on-broad processor.

Vanjoki also spoke rather briefly, about Nokia's Green Policies. For example he mentioned that the Nokia C7 device comes with Bio paints and the C6 is made from recycled metals Nokia is also adopting a policy of minimal packaging cut down the use of paper, plastic and cardboard. Their chargers are also 'green' enabled and all the new handsets  are completely free of BFR, RFR, PDC.

The Third Speaker was Purnima Kochikar, VP, Forum Nokia & Devleoper Community. She informed us that the developer community can rest easy now as the new QT (pronounced Cute) SDK for Symbian smartphones for designing Native apps will now require almost 70% less code than before which will reduce devlopers devloping time by about 50%.