During the Nokia World event, Nokia has launched new smartphones running the latest Symbian^3 mobile operating system.
The company, still the world’s largest phone maker, says each of the devices will be integrated with Ovi services and apps.
“Today our fight back to smartphone leadership shifts into high gear,” says Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President, Markets, Nokia. “Despite new competition, Symbian remains the most widely used smartphone platform in the world. Our new family of smartphones introduced today feature the all-new Symbian OS, rewritten to be faster, easier to use, more efficient and more developer friendly.”
The flagship business device is the Nokia E7:
Touted as a business smartphone, the device adds Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and secure access to corporate email boxes, alongside a number of business apps.
Additionally, the phone has a 4-inch AMOLED touchscreen, full slide-out keyboard and Nokia ClearBlack technology for improved outdoor visibility. Included are an 8MP camera with dual-LED flash, Dolby Digital Plus surround sound via an HDMI video output, the ability to connect to a USB stick, Flash 10 video support, and a built-in FM radio tuner.
Retail price? EUR 495
Result for: boxes
According to a new NPD analysis, Blu-ray will finally break into the mainstream in 2010, especially as prices continue to drop.
The company researched consumers using Blu-ray set-top boxes (not including the PS3) in February 2008 and in August of this year, and the figures clearly showed that BD is out of the “early adopter” phase and into the “dreamers” phase which is the group that wants the new technology but are “deterred by price.”
Regardless, NPD says falling prices, strong holiday sales, and a slowing uptrending economy will finally push Blu-ray from “niche” technology to “mainstream.”
In the 2008 study, over 64 percent of users were early adopters, which only account for 20 percent of the entire market. By August however, the number had been reduced to 38 percent, and replaced by “dreamers” and “sensibles,” a group full of middle aged families who like the technology but waited some time before investing. Those two groups account for over 40 percent of the entire market.
“In the last year, we have made great strides toward becoming mainstream, but we’re not quite there yet,” notes NPD analyst Russ Crupnick, via VB. “But going into the holiday season, we are seeing a combination of fairly reasonable price points on hardware and a lot of content. By February, after the holidays, it’s going to quickly look more and more mainstream. We are on that path.”
There are however still a decent amount of “late adopters” who do not care for the technology or are neutral. Neutral consumers are at 17 percent while “anti-tech” (users that frankly hate Blu-ray) are at 7 percent.
Result for: boxes
The Free60 Project - which aims to open up the Xbox 360 to homebrew to the same degree as the original Xbox (or as close as can be achieved) - has warned those who have not already gotten the Tuesday Xbox 360 update to avoid the update altogether. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, its the first Xbox 360 update to overwrite the first stage bootloader of the system.
Any failure when this process is under-way could badly damage an Xbox 360, according to Free60. The second reason is Microsoft’s intention for doing this. According to Free60, a vulnerability exists which can be used to boot Linux, or other operating systems, on the Xbox 360 console, and that this hack will be released very soon. The Tuesday update fixes the vulnerability.
Here is the full Free60 take on the update…
On Tuesday, Microsoft has released an Xbox 360 software update that overwrites the first stage bootloader of the system. Although there have been numerous software updates for Microsoft’s gaming console in the past, this is the first one to overwrite the vital boot block. Any failure while updating this will break the Xbox 360 beyond repair. Statistics from other systems have shown that about one in a thousand bootloader updates goes wrong, and unless Microsoft has a novel solution to this problem, this puts tens of thousands of Xboxes at risk.
It seems that this update is being done to fix a vulnerability already known to the Free60 Project. This vulnerability has been successfully exploited to run arbitrary code, and a complete end user compatible hack has been in development for some time and is planned to be released on free60.org shortly. It will allow users to take back control of their Xboxes and run arbitrary code like homebrew applications or Linux right after turning on the console and without the need of a modchip, finally opening up the Xbox 360 to a level of hacking as the original Xbox.
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