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Thought: What the N9 Could Mean for Nokia's Sea Ray and other Windows Phones

It was the shot heard 'round the world: on Thursday, Nokia unveiled the N9 to the world with little warning. It has certainly rocked the tech industry to its core and only now have we been able to absorb everything thanks to the initial shock finally wearing off. But you know what's even more shocking? It actually looks good.

The N9 is not only Nokia's first truly serious smartphone since arguably the N95, it's also the first tangible item to come from the company's sidelined MeeGo venture with Intel. That coupled with the impressive nature of the phone has lead to the aforementioned shock--that Nokia could actually create what looks to be an awesome phone with an OS everyone assumed would be DOA.

While some are confused as to why Nokia announced the N9 when it's supposed to unveil its first Windows Phones any day now, we don't think the N9 is just a coincidence. There are many things we see in the N9 that could eventually come to the company's Windows Phones (the Sea Ray seemed like a hype-building tease to us), and to say that our excitement has leaped upwards by more than a few notches would be a pretty massive understatement.

'Swipe'
This is the big one. Definitely one of the most impressive qualities we've seen in the N9 so far is its innovative and astonishingly simple UI layer on top of the MeeGo goods inside. The company has dubbed the interface as 'Swipe' and it's core interface is really just that: swiping your finger across the screen. Nearly every major interaction with the phone, from switching apps to checking your notifications, is controlled by the new gesture interface.

Now don't get the wrong idea; as much as we like the Swipe UI it probably won't be translated in its entirety to a Windows Phone. That being said, we think there's still plenty of areas Nokia could implement Swipe to make Windows Phone a little more gesture friendly. Of course this leverages the murky-but-still-confirmed fact that Nokia would be able to make deeper customizations to the operating system than other OEMs thanks to their agreement with Microsoft.



One obvious implementation would be the lock screen, and it would probably be the simplest to do on Nokia's end. For those unfamiliar, watch the hands-on video above from Engadget. Another area I'd like to see Swipe in action is maybe switching between applications for multitasking. Holding down the back button, while simple, is not exactly intuitive and the operating system never suggests that the action is even there (exactly the same issue as iOS). However if Swipe were to be used for application switching it would make more sense since you're literally swiping away from one thing to do another. For example, swiping from side-to-side would directly jump to the next/last app, while a swipe from the top-down could activate the normal 'Cards' view (swiping from bottom to top may work too, but if there are hardware buttons then it could cause some headaches). Those two additions alone, the easy lock screen and multitasking, would definitely justify Swipe moving over to Windows Phone.

Hardware

You may find this amusing, but we actually began writing this article right after the N9's announcement...which was before the Sea Ray showed up and ruined our speculation fun. That said, there's still plenty to take away from the N9's beautiful (and official) hardware that we could see in the Sea Ray and Nokia's other Windows Phones.

First of all, we know that the Sea Ray will be largely similar in design to the N9. Therefore we can assume it will have the same 3.9" AMOLED display, that curved Gorilla Glass on top, quadband GSM and pentaband 3G support (we'll come back to that later), 16 GB and 64 GB capacity options, support for HSDPA up to 14.4 Mbps (i.e. HSPA+ aka "4G"), an 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera sensor with dual-LED flash, and possibly the 1 GB of RAM if Microsoft allows it. Now to make a note about that pentaband 3G, it means the unlocked version of the Sea Ray could likely be used on any carrier in the world; carrier-specific versions are different, but if Nokia is smart they would avoid that hassle. Now there is some fine print to this: typically the 3G modems of a device are on a single chip for smartphones, and because the Sea Ray will almost definitely not use the Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 processor that the N9 does it could mean pentaband 3G won't make it to their Windows Phones. Same thing goes for the N9's  HSPA+ and 1 GB of RAM.

Another hardware feature of the N9 we'd love to see make the transition to Sea Ray or other devices would be the front-facing camera. We've also heard a rumor that front-facing cameras would be present in all of the next wave of devices. Plus, if Microsoft is determined to make their Skype Phone we'd imagine a front-facing camera would be mandatory so as you can see there's plenty to suggest the feature will make the leap.



A hardware feature we haven't mentioned in the above list is one that's not quite big yet but has plenty of potential to become an industry standard: NFC (near-field communications) support. In simplistic terms, think of it as a low-energy, super-simplified Bluetooth and you'll get what it is (for more detailed info, read here). We've never found some of NFC's common uses very interesting, but Nokia has done some truly awesome work for the N9's support of the feature. As you can see in the video above, Nokia has introduced a new "Play 360" portable speaker and it's highlight feature is the stupidly-easy NFC connection mode. We've seen hands-on videos of this in action, and it's the same as the ad above: all you do is literally tap the N9 to the top of the speaker and that's it. No Bluetooth menus or waiting to connect--it's very slick. There's also a good chance we actually will see this and more NFC magic thanks to rumors hinting NFC will be supported in the next wave of devices. We would love to see the Sea Ray and Nokia's other Windows Phones make real use of the currently useless feature, and thanks to Mango it could really happen.

The MeeGo Conundrum
So why the heck is Nokia coming out with a MeeGo flagship when they've already committed to Microsoft? It's a very confusing situation, but most popular guesses are that the N9 was so deep into development that the higher-ups decided to just complete the device in order to gain anything from that spent R&D money. Recent comments from Stephen Elop have proved as much, saying that the company still would not commit to MeeGo even if the N9 proved successful. That certainly has puzzled a lot of people, but there's a pretty good reason for that. Shortly after Nokia announced their Microsoft partnership, Stephen Elop was making the interview rounds and stated that they were only on track to possibly release a single MeeGo phone in 2011. That's about as disastrous as you could think and even though some may argue Nokia's flagships are all they need, not everyone can afford a cutting-edge device and the company found a ton of success after pioneering the cheap smartphone in Symbian's glory days against Windows Mobile.

MeeGo was an incredibly ambitious and critical project for Nokia, but it also took too much time and now sadly the operating system has fallen to the back burner. In the meantime, Nokia is moving forward with Windows Phone in order to actually, you know, make money and to restore some of the damage the company has suffered from recently.

So if any of the things we've talked about in this article is what Nokia has planned for its "transition years" with Windows Phone, we are totally okay with that plan.

Developers: Mango restricts apps even more from System (including homebrew apps)

We were definitely excited to see all of the new Mango APIs when they were detailed at MIX '11, which meant that apps could be deeper entwined with the operating system. However we were much more excited about the possibilities for homebrew apps as Microsoft was opening up some key accesses that had thwarted eager developers in the past. But it looks like that excitement was premature and we have now learned that Microsoft is in fact restricting apps even more than before with Mango. According to ChevronWP7 member Rafael Rivera,  Mango is going to be restricting apps from making COM calls to the "interop services" found in the operating system's registry and other native resources.

WPCentral's Daniel Rubino attempted to sideload homebrew apps like registry editors and theme changers and was given an error code in response. As Rivera explains it, "Mango won’t officially support the deployment of custom applications with the ID_CAP_INTEROPSERVICES capability flag." So in layman terms, any current homebrew apps that make use of the registry or system access cannot be deployed to the phone thus effectively halting the possibilities for customizations with homebrew.

Mango will still allow apps to be sideloaded via the app deployment tool in the Mango SDK, but don't expect any easy route for developers to create apps with user interface-altering functionality like MobileNotifier for Windows Phone. This pretty much negates everything the development community was excited about with Mango and we really really hope Microsoft is working on that official homebrew plan of theirs.

Via: WMPU, WPCentral
Source: Within Windows

Homebrew: Gameboy Emulator in the works, play some Pokemon Red from the cloud

So you love playing all of those old-school Nintendo Gameboy games, but you finally graduated to a smartphone and you miss them? Well if you were on Android or iOS, you'd probably be using an emulator to get your fix right now but sadly Windows Phone has been left out in the cold. Until now that is!

Developer Samuel Blanchard has been working on a new ">Gameboy emulator dubbed WJ7 (aka Wario's Jewels 7) and boy does it look awesome. It's currently at v0.4.5 but Blanchard promises the public release date "should be very soon". So you may be wondering what the heck took so long for a real emulator to come out for Windows Phone, and the main reason is that Microsoft's APIs are just so limited that it was hard as hell for homebrew developers to figure out how to sideload their own content for their apps. In the case of an emulator, you need to load ROMs of each game into the emulator in order to actually play it but apps in Windows Phone are siloed and therefore unable to read ROMs from anywhere else you may be storing them on the device.

Luckily it looks as if Blanchard has figured out a way around this little setback through the use of GameLists which generates an XML file after you add whatever games you want to play to it. From there you input the XML file link into WJ7 and BAM!, you can play Gameboy games! If that's too complicated for you, think of it like this: the actual game file is in the cloud and you use your phone to 'stream' the game. Now, the only limitation we can see from this method is that it may require an internet connection to play (or at least to load up the game at first) and therefore it could suffer from lag.

We'll try to find out more from Blanchard and if you'd like to follow news about WJ7 direct from the source, you can follow the Twitter account here and the Facebook page here. Also, of course, you can read the original thread at XDA-Developers forums right here as well. If you want to see just how GameLists work and how to prepare your own, jump past the break for a quick YouTube video tutorial.

Update: We have been informed that BadCam3 is not in fact the head developer but rather Samuel Blanchard is. Post has been updated to reflect that.

Via: WPSauce
Source: XDA-Developers Forum

'NBC Nightly News' Brings All of the Brian Williams You Can Handle

I have a confession to make: NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams is one of my heroes. He was criticized a bit when he first took over after Peter Jennings' death, but he's risen above his critics and has become among the best of this generation's news anchors. But that's not all: he's freaking hysterical. If you watch 30 Rock you'll know Williams makes frequent cameos every year and every darn time he steals the spotlight by either making fun of himself or making fun of the losers at Liz Lemon's show. It's amazing and he's probably among the few reputable anchors willing to go on a network comedy show and make fun of himself. So if you enjoy Brian Williams' work as much as we do, you'd be wise to check out the new NBC Nightly News app:

Stay on top of the day's biggest news stories, anytime, anywhere. Join Brian Williams and the NBC Nightly News team seven days a week for top-notch political coverage, cutting-edge health reports, inspiring "Making a Difference" profiles and the most important stories at home and around the world.

You can:
-Easily scroll through and watch news videos
-Watch the latest NBC Nightly News reports
-Find stories in categories like Politics, Health, and Making a Difference
-Watch the most recent full broadcast in its entirety
-Share Nightly News videos on Facebook
-Read Brian Williams’s blog

The app is available for free in the Marketplace; see it by clicking on the tile below.

NBC Nightly News msnbc FREE Version 1.0

Nokia's Stephen Elop: There's No Going Back to MeeGo

We were pretty perplexed to see Nokia announce the N9 just a few days ago: it was oddly timed, with the press embargo of Mango impressions from journalists only ending just a few hours after the announcement, and it was running MeeGo, which everyone presumed was dead.

Well it turns out we were right about that last part: Nokia's MeeGo days are over even before their flagship hits your doorstep. That's according to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who said as much in his interview with Helsingin Sanomat:

In Elop's words, there is no returning to MeeGo, even if the N9 turns out to be a hit.

“I have taken part in the conversations with the teleoperators and I have been part of the consumer test groups. The feedback has been extremely positive and I am sure that the Windows Phone system will be a great success”, Elop says of the strategic partnership announced with microsoft in February of this year.

This is a bit odd to us: when Nokia announced their partnership with Microsoft earlier this year, Stephen Elop called their Windows Phone hardware plan "a transition period" and they would eventually launch MeeGo (or possibly some other project) as a next generation smartphone operating system. So it's hard to tell from his comments here whether or not MeeGo really is dead or not, but at least for now the N9 is going to be more DOA than anyone had probably expected. The controversial CEO also went on to talk about Windows Phone and to dispel any worries the company's remaining Symbian employees may be feeling, and its a pretty good article so we recommend your check it out at Helsingin Sanomat.

With the announcement of over 1400 Nokia jobs being cut by the end of the year in Finland alone, these are hard times for the company. Thousands more are left to think whether they will stand by Nokia's side as the company moves towards Windows Phone, and even though S40 is still sticking around while Symbian is phased out we can't imagine development would demand as many employees as Nokia has.

Via: PocketNow
Source: Helsingin Sanomat

Compal is Now a Windows Phone Manufacturing Partner

Just last month at their Mango Preview Event, Microsoft announced three new OEMs who were throwing their hats into the Windows Phone ring: Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE. Now yet another Asian manufacturer is ready to join in Microsoft's smartphone game: Compal, a Taiwanese manufacturer usually known for their netbook and monitor ODM agreements with Acer, Dell, Toshiba and more.

However Compal is going to be a little different from typical Windows Phone partners. According to Compal chairman Ray Chen, the company is planning to manufacture phones for other companies (like Nokia) as well as for themselves.

Compal will build up a foundation based on the WP7 platform that will enable it to shorten time to market for customized smartphones while expanding the pool of Windows Phone-based clients, Chen commented.

Actually, Compal has already landed some orders for Windows Phone 7-based smartphones from Nokia with shipments to begin in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to industry sources. Compal will also solicit Windows Phone orders from Acer.

Yes this is another manufacturer that isn't particularly well known outside of Asia for their smartphones, but Microsoft could use all of the help it can get. Plus with the company's agreement with Nokia and their potential future alongside Acer, Compal may prove to be a more valuable player than meets the eye.

Via: WMPoweruser
Source: Digitimes