Apple is going to release its sixth-generation smartphone later this month, and the competition has never been tougher. Yesterday's iPhone event capped off a two week run of handset announcements from Samsung, Nokia and Motorola.
Samsung, for its part, is on fire right now with its Galaxy S III, selling more than 20 million units in 100 days. And both Nokia's Lumia 920 and Motorola's RAZR HD look promising. Here's how the iPhone 5 compares to those devices...
For the eighth time in a row, Apple is ranked with the highest customer satisfaction. The iPhone received 849 points out of 1,000, according to J.D. Powers and Associates. HTC ranked second with 790 points and Samsung earned 782 points, below the 783-point survey average.
The iPhone "performs well in all factors, particularly in physical design and ease of operation," the ratings firm announced Thursday. The company measured smartphones for performance, physical design, features and ease of operation.
Nokia has always been the smartphone imaging king so no wonder the ailing cell phone giant emphasized advanced camera capabilities as the headline feature of its new flagship Lumia 920 smartphone, launched earlier today.
PureView technology debuted last year on Nokia's Symbian-driven PureView 808 handset. It's based on a pixel oversampling technique which reduces an image taken at full resolution into a lower resolution variant in order to enable lossless zoom and improve light sensitivity and crispness.
Though the new Lumia 920 only has a 8,x-megapixel sensor versus a whopping 41-megapixel on the PureView 808, it still takes in five times more light than other camera phones and taps image signal processor for some cool image stabilization technology (the iPhone 4S also does that).
Unfortunately, Nokia has gone too far in promoting PureView's ability to stabilize shaky video, as proven by its latest commercial...
Software giant Microsoft and former cell phone champion Nokia held a press conference earlier today in a very wet New York City. Nokia is attempting to re-boot its ailing smartphone biz with some sleek new Lumia handsets, with a little help from its pal Microsoft and its new Windows Phone 8 operating system. It pays to keep tabs on what competition is doing and it's always exciting watching good ol' Windows maker playing a catch up in mobile.
With that in mind, the presser was basically a pre-emptive tease against the massive iPhone 5 launch due next Wednesday. Interestingly, Nokia hasn't shied away from criticizing Samsung for failing to deliver a working Windows Phone 8 phone. Conspicuously enough, Nokia itself did not announce price points or shipping dates for the new Lumias.
Perhaps it would have been better to hold this event a month from now? Be that as it may, Microsoft will hopefully play its cards right and over time establish Windows Phone as a third viable platform. I'm all for it: some balance to the force is needed as it's been disrupted lately by Android's relentless march. Here's what's new from the Microkia camp...
Reports of the September 12 iPhone event started circling late last month. And although several publications have confirmed the date, Apple itself has yet to make any kind of announcement.
But the speculation must have been enough to catch the attentions of Apple's competitors. In the last three weeks, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and Amazon have all announced press events scheduled for the first week of September...
We've known for awhile that Nokia and Microsoft were planning to counter Apple's iPhone 5 launch with an event of their own. It's official now as Microsoft issued media invitations for a Windows Phone-focused presser in New York City on September 5, just a week before Apple is expected to take the wraps off its next iPhone. Talk about preempting what analyst Gene Munster likes to paint as "the biggest consumer electronics launch in history".
With Nokia close to being on life support and Microsoft's market share in mobile still eroding, there better be some darn exciting announcements if smartphone buyers are to consider upcoming Windows Phone 8-powered Lumia phones this holiday season...
One of the most common complaints I keep hearing about the yet-unreleased next iPhone is a sense of dissapointment over its overly unchanged appearance, even if from the design standpoint the iPhone 5 is much more than a rehash of the existing iPhone 4/4S design.
Is you know, Apple's upcoming device is said to sport a two-tone metal backplate (58 percent like it), a taller four-inch screen with new display technology, a relocated headphone jack and a much smaller dock connector with MagSafe-like functionality at the bottom.
But it ain't just Apple. Nokia, once a leader in cell phones and now an also-ran, figured its inaugural Windows Phone 8 handset shouldn't change the design formula established with the sleek Windows Phone 7.5-powered Lumia 710. Heck, if the above leaked photo is the real deal, Nokia may not be willing to change the overall Lumia design much with the new handset...
The next iPhone is upon us (think September 21-ish) and Apple's rivals are scrambling to conveniently time their upcoming 'hero' device announcements around the same timeframe. That's brave tactics, trying to divert spotlight away from the mother of all upgrades, as analyst Gene Munster dubbed the iPhone 5 release.
Both Samsung and Nokia are set to unveil new high-end devices built around Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 software. One of the devices is being described in court documents as an "iconic smartphone". All phones should be on store shelves in time for the holiday shopping frenzy. Should Apple be worried?
Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive (1981-1990), the founder of the BeOS computer operating system and former PalmSource chairman, had a word of advice for Nokia, the struggling Finnish cellphone vendor. Hiring Stephen Elop as its CEO was an expensive mistake, he argued, as this former Microsoftie has basically destroyed Nokia's software platforms before new devices reached the marketplace. At the rate of cash bleeding going on at Nokia, I wonder how long the company can afford to ignore its cardinal mistake and keep Elop on board...
Nokia thus far has seen little commercial success with first devices born out of their Windows Phone partnership with Microsoft, such as the hyped Lumia lineup. Apparently some Nokia executives are beginning to question the decision to hedge their bets on Microsoft's otherwise cool and smooth Windows Phone operating system and the forthcoming Windows 8.
But what if Windows 8 - the first major release to scale from smartphones to tablets to big screens - doesn't live up to high expectations? Where does that leave Nokia, the once leading cell phone vendor now on the increasingly similar downward spiral like Canada-based Research In Motion, another telecom on its way to the technology graveyard?
Different stats and market research all point to the same conclusion: that the mobile market is being reduced to a two-horse race between iOS and Android (or Apple and Samsung, specifically) as once great incumbents such as RIM and Nokia get pushed aside, their market shares seriously declining.
In fact, it's fairly safe to say that on the fifth anniversary of iPhone, both RIM and Nokia are fighting for survival, quite possibly their lifecycle coming to an end. Meanwhile, only four companies are turning profit in the increasingly crowded smartphone space...
It's not a typo: I really meant Nokia, not RIM. Look, the writing's on the wall. In the first quarter of 2012, only Apple and Samsung reaped benefits of the 41 percent year-over-year growth in the smartphone biz.
Together, the two frenemies accounted for 55 percent of global smartphone shipments in Q1 and an astounding 90 percent of the profits.
Apple shipped 35 million iPhones in Q1 while Samsung recorded 43 million global shipments. None of this is surprising. What's stunning is how sharp Nokia's decline is. Of all companies, beleaguered RIM, whose Q1 shipments dipped 20 percent, may soon surpass Nokia...