Nokia at MWC 2012

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is on hand at MWC this week to help spread the company’s message to business partners, carriers, and the press. Ever gregarious and approachable, Elop gave us a few minutes of his time today to discuss the first year of Nokia’s transition, which got started with the announcement of a strategic alliance with Microsoft in February 2011. He was candid about the downsides of this fundamental change in strategy, noting the number of jobs Nokia has had to cut in an effort to streamline operations.

Today, Nokia remains very much in the middle of its transition, says Elop, but a lot has been accomplished in those short twelve months. His present assessment of the decision to move to Windows Phone is no less sanguine than it was a year ago:

Nokia rather blew the doors off MWC 2012 this morning by announcing a 41-megapixel camera sensor ensconced within the confines of a smartphone, the 808 PureView. The product of five years of development work, the collection of technologies under the PureView umbrella is only starting off with the Symbian-based 808 and should make its way to other devices and platforms over time. Nokia is promising amazing image quality from this camera thanks to some oversampling wizardry — taking data from seven pixels in order to fill just one — that uses the full 41-megapixel canvas to generate excellent 5-megapixel stills. At the same time, as a sort of creative mode, Nokia’s also allowing users to capture images as large as 38 megapixels in size. They’ll be nowhere near as pretty, but the option’s there if you want to mess around.

In order to understand what lies beneath the large bump on the back of the 808 handset, I spoke with Nokia’s Damian Dinning, the man in charge of keeping the company’s leadership in camera performance. He was able to elucidate the finer points of the technology, while also bringing a little surprise out of his inside jacket pocket. Watch the video interview below to uncover the mystery for yourself.

It’s rare that we have to put news about a smartphone in our photography hub, but that’s just what Nokia has merited today with the introduction of the PureView 808. The headline spec is that the brand new camera sensor inside it is composed of 41 million pixels, however as you might have surmised, this handset doesn’t take full 41-megapixel stills. Instead, it oversamples — taking the image data from seven neighboring pixels and consolidating it into one pixel’s worth — and generates pictures roughly 5 megapixels in size. That’s still plenty of dots for most uses, and the image quality you can obtain from such a system is frankly ridiculous. Nokia showed me poster-sized samples captured with the 808 PureView (printed entirely unprocessed) that basically had zero noise in them.

Update: Nokia has clarified to say that you are able to take true 38- and 35-megapixel photos with the 808 PureView. It’s just that their pixel-level quality will pretty much suck, with Nokia admitting that it added those options as a sort of creative mode more than anything else. To get the real quality, you’ll want to benefit from the oversampling technique and downsize to 3-, 5- or 8-megapixel shots.

Nokia is announcing two new Windows Phone apps and a Nokia Drive 2.0 update for its range of Lumia devices today at Mobile World Congress 2012. Nokia Drive 2.0 will be released on the Windows Phone Marketplace as a free update for existing Lumia devices and includes speed limit notifications, an advanced dashboard view, and offline capabilities. Windows Phone Nokia Drive users can now use the application offline, one of the biggest drawbacks to the original release, in the same way as existing Symbian users of Nokia Drive.

Nokia Reading, a brand new Windows Phone app for Lumia devices, will work as an integrated hub like the existing Nokia Music application. Reading will provide access to news, audiobooks, and ebooks in a digital magazine format, allowing users to simply add their own RSS feeds. Nokia has agreements with a number of online publications, and is planning to expand those in the future. Nokia plans to update the app with a news stream feature that allows Windows Phone users to pin news streams to the start screen with dynamic live tile updates.

MWC 2012 isn’t quite Nokia World, but the Finnish company has kept interest going with a number of important announcements. Chief among them, in terms of Nokia’s long-term strategy, is the Lumia 610. This device drops the entry-level price for the Lumia range down to 189 euros before taxes and subsidies, which is precisely 70 percent of the launch price of the Lumia 710, Nokia’s previous cheapest Windows Phone.

An upcoming update to the Windows Phone OS is what will make the 610 possible: a lighter version of the software will be capable of running on only 256MB of RAM and support slower processors than the 1GHz Snapdragon that has so far been standard issue on WP hardware. The Lumia 610 limits itself to that quarter of a gigabyte of memory and also makes do with an 800MHz processing chip. In practice, that seems to be showing no negative impact on interface responsiveness, though we did only have a quick browse around the live tile menu and apps list. A deeper investigation could reveal where corners have had to be cut, but for now Microsoft seems to have successfully reengineered its OS for more humble devices. Nokia describes this change as the first time its influence has been felt in the development of Windows Phone.

Nokia is announcing its latest Lumia device at Mobile World Congress 2012 today. The Nokia Lumia 610 is designed to be a low-end affordable Lumia Windows Phone, priced at just 189 euros. With a focus on China, the Lumia 610 introduces a new price point and markets for Microsoft’s mobile operating system. The Lumia 610 includes an 800MHz processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 5-megapixel camera — pushing Microsoft’s Windows Phone specifications to the lowest point in the platforms short history.

Nokia describes the Lumia 610 as “hugely important” for both itself and Microsoft in terms of scale and reach. Although features like Bing Local Scout and automatic SkyDrive uploads will not be available, due to a limit on the amount of background data exchange, Lumia 610 owners can activate some of them manually. Nokia’s latest Lumia will run an updated version of Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed Tango, that we had heard a number of rumors about previously. Nokia refuses to disclose whether it will pay a lower royalty fee for this lighter version of Windows Phone, but it does tell us that the Lumia 610 will be released in Q2 2012.

Microsoft is planning to support a new minimum hardware specification for its Windows Phone platform from April. Codenamed Tango, the software giant has engineered its latest Windows Phone 7.5 update to target new price points and emerging markets like China. The update is the first significant change to the Windows Phone codebase as a result of the unique partnership between Microsoft and Nokia. Nokia is promising to bring a number of low-cost Lumia products to China thanks to lower specifications.

One of the first devices to demonstrate the Windows Phone 7.5 update in action is Nokia’s Lumia 610 device. Announced today at Mobile World Congress 2012, the 610 includes an 800MHz processor and 256MB of RAM, two key ways to reduce the minimum hardware requirements of Windows Phone. Microsoft is also support Qualcomm 7x27a chipsets with its latest update. Although the engineering of Windows Phone to 256MB of RAM is a good sign of the flexibility for new devices, the lack of hardware resources brings some restrictions along the way. Bing Local Scout is not available due to a limit on the amount of background data exchange. Likewise, automatic picture uploads to SkyDrive are also disabled, although these can be uploaded manually.

Nokia’s big CES debutant, the Lumia 900, is making headlines again today with the company revealing it’ll launch in Canada and Europe in the second quarter of this year. An AT&T exclusive in the US, the 900 is yet to be released anywhere, but now we know it’ll enjoy a more international reach when it does show up. The Canadian version will offer LTE just like in the US, while the Euro variant will be equipped with 42Mbps HSPA+ connectivity. Either way, Nokia is showing a definite awareness of the need to compete with fast mobile broadband options. International pricing has been set at 480 euros before taxes and subsidies.

Otherwise, the Lumia 900 is said to be entirely unchanged from the phone already announced, although there is the addition of a glossy white option to complement the matte black and cyan versions. Running Windows Phone 7.5 on a 4.3-inch AMOLED display, the Lumia 900 promises to be among the most desirable phones Microsoft’s mobile platform has seen yet. You can see more of its shiny new white variety below.

The 302 (pictured above) is arguably the most interesting of the three, a full-QWERTY device that is said to be the first non-smartphone with support for Mail for Exchange — an odd juxtaposition of enterprise capability and feature phone simplicity, perhaps, but there must be something in Nokia’s research that suggests there’s a need for such a product in some markets. It’s shipping immediately for €95 ($128) with retail availability early next month.

On the lower end, you’ve got the Asha 202 and 203, identical candybars with numeric keypads and resistive touchscreens; at €60 ($81) unlocked, Nokia says it’s a new price breakthrough for a touchscreen device. The only difference between the two models is that the 203 supports dual SIMs. Look for both in the second quarter, but don’t look for high-speed data here: these models are strictly 2G.

Microsoft is releasing a beta version of Skype for Windows Phone today, with a full release due in April. Skype for Windows Phone beta allows users to make audio and video calls to Skype contacts over 3G, 4G, and WiFi. Skype users can also make calls to landlines and mobiles with the application. Microsoft has certified a number of devices for Skype Windows Phone, including the Nokia Lumia 710, Lumia 800, HTC TITAN, HTC Radar , Samsung Focus S, and Samsung Focus Flash, providing the “best performance” on these particular handsets.

The Skype Windows Phone beta builds on Microsoft’s new user interface, utilizing the best parts of Metro style. Although the application is beta, Skype is promising to enhance it in future. “This is only the beginning for Skype for Windows Phone,” said Skype’s Rick Osterloh. “It’s just going to get better and better.”