“Using a new feature called dual capture, the Nokia Lumia 1020 simultaneously takes a high resolution 38 megapixel image for endless editing opportunities, and creates a 5 megapixel picture that is easy to share to social networks with Windows Phone 8.”

The camera also comes packed with a built-in xenon flash, a mechanical shutter and even a tripod mount using an accessory called the Nokia Camera Grip. Using Nokia’s PureView HD technology and coupled with Carl Zeiss hardware, I’d be hard-pressed to find any camera on a smartphone anywhere that could even attempt to play in the same ballpark.

Other specs to consider:

• 4.5″ AMOLED 1280 x 728 Gorilla Glass display
• 1.5GHz Dual-core processor
• 2GB RAM and 32GB onboard storage
• Wireless charging
• LTE
• HD Video and voice recording

I have to admit, the Lumia design has evolved and the curved Gorilla Glass makes the Nokia Lumia 1020 an incredibly good looking phone and of course running Windows Mobile 8 as the operating system, it’s certainly a pretty interface and it’s simplicity in design makes it a very attractive device to own and use. I’d definitely recommend that if you owned one of these puppies, you get it covered as part of your portable possession  insurance.

Here’s a link to the Nokia Lumia 1020 Full Spec Sheet.

The update is available for:

• Nokia Lumia 900
• Nokia Lumia 800
• Nokia Lumia 710
• Nokia Lumia 610
• Nokia Lumia 510

The instructions are simple, use the USB cable to plug your Lumia device into your PC or laptop. Start up the Zune application and follow the on-screen prompts.

The new(ish) CEO, Stephen Elop, has sent out a fairly brutal, yet frank memo to his staff in prep for the announcements expected this week. This too just days before the 3GSM conference kicks off in Barcelona.

The full memo is below the break:

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally – taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

It’s really cool and Nokia Situations can be downloaded and installed on your device free of charge.

This is Nokia’s big boy phone. Its not for the faint hearted and packs some serious hardware & serious software. Running its newest (and greatest OS) Symbian^3, which is designed specifically for touch devices with high definition multimedia and not the old Symbian S60 v5 which Nokia tried VERY hard to take v3 of S60, retrofit it for touch devices and hope that it worked. It did work, but it worked as well as it deserved given the effort that Nokia put it into it. It wasn’t bad, but it definitely wasn’t even close to great either.

Symbian^3 is different. You can feel it. Nokia has taken all the lessons learnt with the N97 and N97 mini and correct them. Its very clear that this is Nokia’s “once bitten, twice shy” device. It manages multi-tasking like a dream, so running multiple apps simultaneously is not going to slow the phone down. Its no longer impractical to listen to music, browse the web on the phone and have the sudden need to take a quick photo and email or MMS it. This phone does all of this, all while geo-tagging your photos, editing them and uploading them to a social network.

The phone is the best device that I’ve used so far, except for 2 issues that I have with it.
The first:
is that it crashes, A LOT. This is a firmware issue and I’m told by folk at Nokia that it will be solved with the first firmware release, so I’m not going to hold this one against them.

The second:
This issue is quite a dof problem, but to me, its a big problem.
The speaker is at the back of the phone, so when its laying on its back with the screen up, like most people would, things sounds muffled. It becomes a real problem, when you rely on your phone to wake you up in the morning, but you can’t hear it, because it gets muffled. Its pretty obvious that the hardware designers screwed up on that, but otherwise, everything else is awesome.

Things that I hate:

• It crashes a lot.
• Speaker is on the back.
• Spell check sucks and not half as good as its competitors.
• Landscape typing is slightly slower than portrait typing.
• QWERTY keyboard layout of special characters have been reorganised again (This is now different on every Nokia device and has no standard)
• HDMI plastic cover flap feels cheap and seems to have been an afterthought.
• SIM removal is not easy.

Things that I love:

• 12 Megapixel photo camera
• HD Video Camera
• HDMI out (i.e. plug it straight into your HD tv)
• USB in (Play video from USB dongles, ext HDDs, etc.)
• Large bright screen with multiple home screens
• Great widget collection
• HTML mail support with multiple mail services accessible via widgets
• Calendar management.
• Mail & Calendar syncing with Mail for Exchange is VERY simple to set up
• Message preview widget gives you a summary of missed events, like meetings, missed calls, SMSes, etc.
• Social Network app integrates Facebook & Twitter natively into the phone.
• Angry Birds!

Conclusion:
Would I buy it?
Yes! As soon as the firmware update is out, this phone is undoubtedly the best piece of mobile hardware available today.

If you haven’t heard yet, this device is the hottest Nokia out there right now and built on the Finnish company’s new OS, Symbian^3. The phone is being pitched as a highly customisable phone with multiple homescreens and widgets galore to set the phone up and the user interface the way users prefer.

Some of the crazy cool feature highlights are:

• 12 Megapixel photo camera
• Full HD Video capture
• USB in (That’s right, you can insert a USB Flash drive or USB Hard drive directly into the device to browse and use files on the external USB device. It’s about the coolest thing I’ve seen!)
• HDMI out allowing users to plug the  Nokia N8 directly into HD TVs for viewing of video, photos and other digital content.
• etc, etc.

Download the full Nokia N8 User Guide here.

These videos are official Nokia releases and highlight just some of the coolness:

Nokia N8 Introduction Video:

Nokia N8 Gaming Video:

Nokia N8 12MP Camera Video:

Heres the list what to expect in V31 of Nokia E72 firmware update:

NEW CONTENT

• WAPI support for China
• Internet radio
• Smart Connect
• Bloomberg
• Advanced Communications Manager

UPDATED

• Freestyle email (2.05, BL3, csw.32.rd_email_10w04)
• My Nokia (4.1)
• Nokia Maps SR3
• Share on OVI (4.3)
• OviStore (1.5.436)
• Cherry (2.1)
• Browser 7.2

MAJOR CORRECTIONS

• Stability improvements
  • Memory leak corrections to improve general stability
  • Music player, radio, video recording, earphone, security sw and encryprion stability corrections
  • Localisation corrections(MAPS, Calendar, Contacts, Email and Browser area)
• Email improvements
  • MFE activation registration correction
  • Synchronisation correction to mailbox creation(like Yahoo and Gmail) for the first time
  • Email editing correction(dubling of words when deleting suggestions)
  • Correction to synchronization when syncing draft meeting request
  • Set default setting “Sync while roaming” to “No”
  • Sending message without password initials crash correction
  • Messaging menu memory leak correction
• Calendar
  • Meeting request creation stability corrections
  • Requiring meeting request corrections
  • Meeting request saving correction if meeting request is saved before sending
  • Meeting update send after editing request
• Contacts
  • Contacts stability improvements (arrow keys pressed rapidly before contacts are loaded, add searched contact to the group without name, mail box removal, open/close contacts during call, conference call with two same name participants, … )
  • Company name displayed in contacts
  • Group deleting correction when group is deleted from group edit view
  • Contact group editing view corrections
  • Contacts search corrections (Group cannot be searched after editing its conference service number, Image detail of marked contact is not displayed in search result, Group disappears when add contact to it in searched result view)
• Home screen
  • Missed call indicator removal correction after call has been accomplished form action menu
  • Message notifier corrected when several voice messages received
• MAPS
  • New maps version included
  • Free navigation
  • Improved GPS handling
  • Landmark corrections(land mark received vie MMS, Landmarks are not displayed when selecting places during planning route from landmarks application)
  • Voice guidance corrections (turning directions, safety camera)
  • Route planning/saving corrections
• Browser
  • Browser bitmap memory leak correction
  • Browser closing stability improvement before connection is open
  • Secure connection icon corrections (going to an other secure page, secure connection canceling)
  • When moving multiple Bookmarks, the last selected Bookmark is not moved
  • Bookmark icon correction
• Other
  • Spacebar stops working correction
  • Emergency call correction when lock code query is on and call made quickly after power on
  • Theme effects disabled by default

I’m excited to show you pre-announcement screen shots of the latest version of Ovi Maps with 3D view, 3D Buildings and Routing and Navigation for both Car and Walk mode.

Here are a few screen shots that I just took using the service for the first time, with my first impressions:

Ovi Maps Homepage defaults to Cape Town. This must be done by using my IP as I have not set up any other profiling information regarding my location.

Ovi Maps requires a browser plug in to be installed.

Ovi Maps Map View Options, include the standard that we have to come love on Ovi Maps on Mobile, Map View, Satellite and Terrain.

Check after the break for more screen shots, including the 3D Landmarks of Cape Town.

Ovi Maps 3D and 2D Toggling is made easy by the button on the top right-hand corner.

Ovi Maps More… Allows for management of Night Mode/Day Mode toggling, inclusion of 3D Landmarks and the ability to set the default language of Ovi Maps.

That’s right, those 3D buildings are of Cape Town’s foreshore and include the CTICC, MetLife and the Cullinan Inn. How cool is THAT?

Ovi Maps Navigation with Turn by Turn Directions for both Drive and Walk Mode.

Ovi Maps Good Stuff Content Sharing. Here I have added Urban Khana HQ to the map and it is now publicly available globally to view and navigate to. I particular like the function “Share This Good Thing”, which gives you a URL to share on the Ovi Platform.

Anyway, I now enjoy Ovi Maps 3.0 on my Nokia N97 with free navigation.

I have however been invited to a very intriguing Nokia Navigation event. It started, when I accepted an invitation to attend and was swiftly followed with a small gift box arriving in the mail.

With no explanation, the tag on the gift box read, ” Thank you for accepting Nokia’s invitation. Here is a small taste of what you will experience. Looking forward to seeing you in Cape Town.”

Inside the box, I found

1. A Luggage Tag,
2. EverySun AquaSport Lip Balm,
3. Smarties Mini Eggs,
4. Pyatt’s Mini Cheddars
5. Maynards Mini Ice Cream Mallow Gums
6. and a pack of South African Playing Cards

I have no idea what Nokia and Ovi have up their sleeves with this gift pack and what it means, but if this teaser photo that has just been released by the NokiaOvi team which are busy setting up the event in Cape Town is anything to go by, I’d say that tomorrow’s announcement and demo is going to be REALLY cool.

Here are my thoughts:

1. Coooool!
2. WOW!
3. Freaking A!

It has been that great for me so far, that I will go as far as saying that it is definitely the best mobile device available. In fact, I have even wowed iPhone users while showing the N900 off.

Heres a list of what I like:

• Large readable, bright screen with light sensor
• Touch screen is responsive (more than the Nokia N97) and intuitive
• Menu system is logical and practical
• Switching between applications has never been as easy and well thought out as it is on the N900
• The processor and ram handled 7 active applications without affecting responsiveness of the device. (Two games, a browser, an augmented reality app, mail, a YouTube media player and the contacts engine)
• Instant Messaging integration is unchallenged as the best on any device with full contacts integration and aggregation of both presence and status messages across multiple IM platforms.
• Contacts management is BRILLIANT! (I was able to import all my GMail and Skype contacts onto the device’s Phonebook and merge this new set of data with existing contact information. This is the kind of thing that g33k mobile wet dreams are made of!)
• The Phonebook aggregates users presence and displays Profile pics from 3rd party services.
• Multiple home screens. (A feature that is logically brilliant but illogically left out of the Nokia N97)
• It runs on Linux, so you have access to a Terminal, it’ll be cheap and its open source.
• The well built sturdiness of the device and the firm well sized QWERTY keyboard.
• The bookmarks display small thumbnail images of the site that can be stored as widgets on the home screen
• The browser is quick and runs javascript (even badly written javascript) really well.

Naturally, after using the device for a few days, I have found a few things that I don’t like:

• The phone is bulky. I was a Nokia E71 user and I think that Nokia has proven that it can built powerful yet petit devices and that’s not what the Nokia N900 is. Powerful sure, but it needs a diet and a gym contract!
• The phone is permenantly in landscape mode unless it is in call mode. This is nifty for some applications as it maximises the screen real estate, but natural tendency is to use the phone in portrait mode. It’s a bit of a paradigm shift to use it landscape mode permanently!
• The device blocks the ability to dial any numbers that include * or #. (I tried purchasing an SMS bundle and could not as the ability to dial *111# is not allowed.) I am sure that while the devices are being tested by the networks, they will pick this up and have it fixed before it hits the SA market in any case.
• Mail for Exchange doesn’t work for me yet. This is a problem that I had with my N97 for a while, but after a firmware patch, nagging the Mail Product manager and a few hard resets of the phone, I got it to work)
• Only two profiles exist, General and Silent. I know that many people only use these two profiles, but as a Nokia fan for many years, I have come to use more profiles and make use of Meeting, Silent and General almost daily.
• MSN messenger was left out as a default IM service and it currently ships with GoogleTalk, Skype and Jabber services.
• The unlock slider position works while holding the device in landscape mode, but as a natural portrait mode phone carrier, it is easy to expect the unlock slider to be on the left of the device (the top) as this is where it is on the N97, however there you will find the power button and easily switch the phone off when thinking that you are activating the screen lock.

With that said, I have to admit that being in the fortunate position of working in the mobile industry, I have used iPhones, BlackBerrys, HTC’s, etc. And while I have always advocated that the N97 was an awesome device, I still secretly wished it had the slick interface of the iPhone with the added practicality of the N97. The Nokia N900 fits that profile and goes beyond my every expectation of a mobile handset. It truly is an awesome phone and I am going to have serious trouble getting used to my now plebish Nokia N97.

I will continue using the phone for a few more weeks, but will then have to give it back unwillingly to Nokia!

UPDATE:

I have managed to get Mail for Exchange to work. A little perseverance did the trick. It is now syncing my mail, calender, tasks and contacts without any problem via wifi. )