smartphone

A closer look at Nokia's would-be iPhone killer

NEW YORK--Nokia's new N97 smartphone is cool, but it's still no iPhone.

I got a chance to look at Nokia's latest smartphone, the N97, on Thursday at the company's annual Capital Markets Day here. While Nokia's marketing team wouldn't actually let me play with the phone, since it won't officially go on the market until 2009, I got a demonstration of some of the phone's features and functionality from Jukka Heiska, director of product management for the N97. A video of the phone demonstration will be posted Friday on CNET News as well as on CNET TV.

In some ways it's unfortunate that every touch-screen phone that comes out these days is compared to Apple's iPhone. But given the popularity of the iPhone, especially here in the U.S., it's difficult not to do the comparisons.

My first impression of the new N97 is that even though it has impressive specifications, like a total of 48 gigabytes of potential storage and a 5-megapixel camera and video recorder, the phone seems more like an evolution of Nokia's N-95 or N-96 smartphones rather than a ground-breaking new touch-screen device that could potentially be the next iPhone killer.

For one, the touch-screen wasn't terribly sophisticated. Icons could be dragged and dropped using a finger, but unlike the iPhone, which allows you to pinch text to magnify it or reduce it, or even the new BlackBerry Storm that allows you to double click on text or images to make them bigger, the N97 didn't offer these features.

Design-wise the phone looked more like Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1. It has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a tilted screen. In this way, it's an improvement over the N95 or the N96, which offer tons of features and functionality, but lack full QWERTY keyboards.

That said, there are a few key features that the N97 offers that the iPhone doesn't. For example, the Nokia Web browser on the N97 supports Flash and Flash video, something that Apple's Safari browser doesn't support. And of course, heavy texters and e-mail enthusiasts, will like the full QWERTY keypad. I've had several iPhone owners tell me that they still carry around a BlackBerry for sending e-mails on the go, because they don't like the iPhone's virtual keyboard for typing longer messages.

The phone, which Nokia's marketing team calls a "mobile computer" also offers a whopping 32GB of storage on the device with the option of adding up to another 16GB of storage through a microSD card. And then there is the 5-megapixel camera, which also records DVD-quality video.… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 865: Solidarity, my ape-hands brother

Tom and Jason have an ape-like bonding moment on today's show; Brian Tong calls "bull" on rumors of a $99 iPhone 3G; we find out that Google went right up against the DOJ deadline before it finally yelled "chicken" and walked away from its ad deal with Yahoo; Apple raises an awesome conspiracy theory in its Psystar lawsuit; and Monster Cable can just go straight to you-know-where. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 865

Listener co-host details: Email buzz@cnet.com with your name, phone number, preferred time of day (with time zone). We … Read more

Smartphone sales slow amid troubled economy

Smartphone sales slowed in the third quarter of 2008, market research firm Gartner said Thursday.

The firm reported that the growth in sales of smartphones around the world only grew 11.5 percent during the third quarter. The firm also said that this was the weakest growth it has seen in the sector since it began tracking smartphone sales.

Gartner had previously reported that first quarter sales grew about 29.3 percent in 2008 and second quarter sales were up about 15.7 percent compared to the same quarters a year earlier.

In total, smartphone manufacturers sold about 36.5 … Read more

Dialed In 59: Piping-hot phones and Thanksgiving leftovers

Everyone's back from Thanksgiving holiday, and we hope you've left some room for a nice helping of cell phone news. This week we're serving up the latest on the just-announced Nokia N97, BlackBerry Storm updates, and outrageous G1 roaming charges. All this, plus Kent tells us about blogging from 35,000 feet in the air and of course, the latest reviews and listener questions.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Rumor of the week T-Mobile Shadow

News Nokia's mystery device? The Nokia N97 Verizon drops price on Samsung Omnia Verizon gets its own HTC Touch Pro … Read more

BlackBerry sales to disappoint Wall Street

Research In Motion is the latest smartphone maker to fall victim to the sagging economy.

The maker of the popular BlackBerry mobile devices late on Tuesday reduced its outlook for its fiscal third quarter, which ended on Saturday. The company said it expects to earn between 81 cents and 83 cents a share on revenue of between $2.75 billion and $2.78 billion. In September, RIM said it expected profits between 89 cents and 97 cents on revenue of between $2.95 billion and $3.1 billion.

RIM's executives blame the shortfall on the stronger dollar and the &… Read more

HTC focuses on phone design; acquires One & Company Design, Inc.

On Monday, HTC, the manufacturer of many of today's popular smartphones, announced its acquisition of San Francisco-based design firm One & Company Design, Inc (One & Co). A design company? Weird, right? Actually, not really.

If you've followed HTC over the years, you may have noticed its smartphones taking on a new look recently. The company has gone from the traditional Pocket PC-phone form factor of the HTC Mogul and the smaller but still bulky HTC SMT5800 to the sleeker HTC Touch Diamond and sexier HTC Touch Pro, and this is in large part due to One & … Read more

T-Mobile Shadow II spotted on FCC's site

In recent months, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint have done a pretty good job updating its smartphone lineups, but T-Mobile seems to be lagging in this area. Aside from the T-Mobile G1 and the RIM BlackBerry Pearl Flip, we haven't seen anything new and there are some aging Windows Mobile smartphones that need refreshing, namely the T-Mobile Shadow, T-Mobile Dash, and the T-Mobile Wing. Well, it looks like at least one of those devices will soon have a replacement.

Phone Scoop spotted the T-Mobile Shadow II on FCC's Web site Tuesday, complete with specifications and a … Read more

Analyst says iPhone kept smartphone growth alive

One analyst thinks that if it wasn't for the iPhone, smartphone growth would have slowed to a crawl last quarter.

Charlie Wolf of Needham & Company released some data Tuesday, as captured by MacNN, and said he believes that Apple's iPhone accounted for virtually all the sequential growth in the market during the third quarter, which totaled 28.6 percent. That's when Apple launched the iPhone 3G and sold 6.9 million units, putting it in second place among all smartphone vendors with 16.6 percent of the market.

At first glance it seems a bit of … Read more

Nokia upgrades mapping and messaging services

Nokia has released new versions of its mapping and navigation service along with a new messaging service in an effort to build out its mobile services.

The upgraded Nokia Maps offers new features, such as high-resolution aerial images and 3D landmarks. The new software also allows users to share their location using GPS. Nokia has also tied the latest version of Nokia Maps more closely with its PC-based service Ovi. And the new Nokia Maps allows users to plan their journey ahead of time on their PCs and sync the information with their mobile phones for when they're on … Read more

Nokia's mystery device? The Nokia N97

Twenty-four hours after teasing us with news of a major product announcement, Nokia officially took the wraps off its mystery smartphone on Tuesday at the Nokia World 2008 conference in Barcelona, Spain. And despite some close guesses, no one got it quite right, so without further ado, let us introduce you to the Nokia N97.

Part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, the N97 trumps all previous models with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen (anyone else reminded of the AT&T Tilt or Sony Ericsson Xperia X1?). Yes, there's the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, but the N97 includes phone capabilities and is designed for the "needs of Internet-savvy consumers."

For example, the smartphone provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

The Home screen can be personalized with widgets of favorite Web and social-networking sites. Finally, the N97 is fully compatible with Nokia's Ovi Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage gaming platform--though these services have yet to fully launch in the United States.

The Symbian-based smartphone also features a music and video player, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a whopping 32GB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 16GB microSD card.

The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone is HSDPA-capable handset, but it currently supports only the 900/1900/2100MHz bands (AT&T's 3G network runs on 850/1900MHz, while T-Mobile runs on 1700/2100MHz). There is integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however. … Read more