Alec Saunders SquawkBox

You might not be aware of this, but there’s just been an earthquake in Finland. Figuratively speaking, anyway.  Said earthquate occurred at precisely 12:30 PM EDT, today.  That was the moment that Nokia took the wraps off its real competitor to iPhone.

Specifically, three announcements were made:

Nokia unveiled the 5800 XpressMusic (press release, datasheet).  It’s the first mass-market device from Nokia with touch-screen technology.  As you can see from the video, it looks very familiar, being a Symbian OS with touch capabilities built in.  At the same time, it has some familiar elements of other touch screen interfaces we’ve seen such as easy fingertip transitions.  You might also note in the video that at times the demonstrator seems to be pushing on the screen.  The 5800 XpressMusic also includes haptics to provide tactile feedback to the user. Check it out.

 

 Nokia MusicExpress 5800: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Comes with Music (press release, backgrounder) is Nokia’s new digital entertainment service.  When you buy a supported Nokia device, including the NSeries, any of the XPressMusic phones and some other mass market phones, Nokia gives you access to the Nokia Music store at no additional charge for an entire year.  Download (and keep) as many tracks as you like. This is not a subscription.  You get to download and keep as many tracks as your heart desires. Tracks are delivered in Windows Media format, with DRM.

S60 5th Edition (press release) was also introduced.  This latest operating system release includes support for new displays, the touch UI, a widescreen mode, a variety of new sensor support, and updated applications and browser support.  Wonderfully cool things are possible with the new sensor support, like being able to stop the ringer by picking the phone up and putting it back down face down.

A touch screen phone and operating system were not unexpected.  After all, Nokia had to respond to Apple’s phenomenal success with iPhone.  However, the gutsy decision to give away the music goes straight after Apple’s cash cow, iTunes.

Scorched earth is a powerful offensive posture.  One wonders what kind of deal with the devil RIAA Nokia had to agree to in order to gain the rights to distribute all those tracks for no money… and what the impact will be on their bottom line.

Look for 5800 XpressMusic devices with North American standard radios to land here Q1 2009. Exciting times are ahead.

Related links:

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic aka the Tube released plus first hands-on

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic: Hands-on With Nokia’s First S60 Touch Phone

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic hands-on

This evening Skype has Tomorrow Skype will release the second beta of Skype 4.0.  Skype 4.0 is an ambitious attempt by the company to redesign the Skype UI to better expose the features of Skype to end users, and to reduce confusion around how to use those features.

After studying feedback from over 350,000 users, including 50,000 new skype users, they’ve returned some features that were missing from Skype 4.0 beta 1, giving it a more familiar look and feel.  Here’s Skype’s Product Manager for their Windows products, Mike Bartlett, to explain more.

I’ve been using the beta privately for the last couple of days.  The changes, while subtle, absolutely do improve the Skype experience.  My favorite is the compact view, which is a return to something more akin to the familiar old Skype user interface. See below:

The bottom line? According to a conversation I had with Mike earlier this week, they’re seeing more users using more types of communications, including a dramatic spike in video usage.  Perhaps more important from a corporate perspective, they’re also seeing a spike in users choosing paid-for premium services.

Join me tomorrow morning on the SquawkBox where Mike will be our guest.  And if you want to take the beta for a spin beforehand, download it here when available.

There are several interesting startups solving the problem of cell phone loss.  Both YouGetItBack, launched last June, and Maverick Mobile, launched at DEMO, back up your data, and let you lock down your mobile in the event of loss pointing out that with smart phones the most costly loss to the user is likely not the phone, but the data present in the device itself.

Yesterday YouGetItBack announced additional measures to help you recover the actual device.  Their “Mobile SuperHero” software has always allowed the user to lock down a lost device.  Now it has been enhanced to include the ability to send the phone’s physical location back to YouGetItBack.  Moreover, because the tracker is network based, the software can continue to send tracking information even in the event of a SIM change.

Press release here.

Some congratulations are clearly in order for the Tungle team.  Right ahead of the market meltdown they’ve secured $5 million in additional financing led by Massachusetts Commonwealth Capital Partners.

In addition, Tungle has released an update to their application in order to make it much more web based.  Gone is the clunky desktop application for arranging meetings, replaced by a web based interface, and a simple Outlook connector.  It makes for a much better experience than their first release.

If you need to arrange meetings between individuals in different companies, or who don’t share calendars, Tungle takes away the pain removing the endless email exchanges.

Well done!

Speculation is running rampant that Bell plans to interfere with GPS on BlackBerry mobile phone devices in the near future.  The rapidy spreading rumour says that in the coming weeks Bell will cause users of free GPS mapping applications (Google maps, or BlackBerry maps, for example) to experience GPS lock times of 2 to 10 minutes, up from the 15 to 20 seconds usually experienced.  Users will be able to spend $10/month to regain access to high speed GPS locks by subscribing to Bell’s own GPS service, called GPS Nav.

Assisted GPS, which is the technology used by today’s GPS handsets, can make a GPS fix simple and quick to establish.  It works by using the phone’s cellular system to also communicate with the cell towers, adding another level of accuracy to the fix.  If Bell were to simply turn of AGPS for non-subscribers, the effect described would be a delay of 2 to 10 minutes.  I personally experienced this over the past summer travelling in Europe in countries where I had no data access on my Nokia N78.  

Let’s hope the bean counters at Bell are thinking twice.  A move like this would more than likely result in the mass of cell phone users interested in navigation simply picking up and moving to Rogers where no such restriction exists.