Nokia Lumia Icon Video Review- a Top Spec Windows Phone for Verizon

We loved the Nokia Lumia 1520, and I personally said it was the best Windows phone that I would never use. Why? At 6", it was too big for me personally. Others who felt the same have patiently waited for Nokia to release a smartphone with the same cutting edge specs and 20MP PureView camera, but in a smaller package. Now we have it in the form of the Nokia Lumia Icon, a worldwide exclusive to Verizon Wireless. 
The 5.9 ounce Nokia Lumia Icon has a 5" full HD Clear Black OLED display with outdoor brightness mode and heightened touch sensitivity for gloves but no Nokia Glance feature. Like the 1520 it runs on a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core CPU with Adreno 330 graphics and 2 gigs of RAM, giving it the same horsepower as top Android phones. It has 32 gigs of internal storage but no microSD card slot. The phone has dual band WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS and a front HD webcam. Qi wireless charging is built in--no need to buy a special charging back. The 20MP PureView camera that can shoot DNG RAW files? It's every bit as good as the excellent Lumia 1520 camera.

The only place the Lumia Icon lets us down is looks. Lumia has been synonymous with unique and attractive styling, but the Icon looks a little boxy and dull. Somehow Nokia's Lumia models suffer on Verizon and we can only guess that carrier prefers staid looks and eschews zingy colors. The usually curvy Lumia design is squared off here, and in fact the sides are broad and flat enough that you can stand it on three of its four sides (the side with all the buttons won't work). The sides are unibody aluminum and the back is Nokia's usual matte polycarbonate, and the back has a gentle bulge. Verizon Wireless offers the phone in your choice of black or white for $199 on contract and $550 with no contract commitment. This is a CDMA phone with 4G LTE and it has unlocked GSM world roaming with 2G and 3G but no LTE for GSM networks.

Hee's our Nokia Lumia Icon video review. Our full written review will follow.

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Nokia X gets rooted bringing custom ROM and Google Services

One of the best things about Android is the customisation options available. So when the Nokia X was announced only for it to be confirmed there would be no Google services integration, developers everywhere simply took that as a challenge.
Nokia still make arguably the best hardware out of all smartphone manufacturers, and fans have been longing for a Nokia running Android. However, given the integration with Microsoft, Nokia chose to remove the Google services (Gmail, Play Store etc.) and go with Windows services instead.
Luckily, developers have already rooted the Nokia X and ported a custom ROM to it bringing across Google services in the process.
Using a tool called Framaroot, the guys over at XDA Developers managed to obtain root access to the device and port over a custom ROM, so now you can enjoy the full Android experience complete with Google services on the Nokia X.
The Nokia X as standard comes with its own store whereby developers would submit their Apps to the Nokia Store, which Nokia says can be done without rewriting any code. Whilst not a huge deal, cutting out Gmail and the Google Play Store is a big loss.
Nokia X devices are currently only shipping to developers, but this news means for those wanting a full Android experience can now have it.

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Nokia prepares Android phone ‘Normandy’ for 2014 launch

Image courtesy of @evleaks
Nokia is rumoured to be building a low-end Android phone codenamed Normandy, as the Finnish mobile giant nears the finalisation of a deal with Microsoft.
A source close to The Verge claims that Nokia is working on a ‘forked’ version of the Google operating system, which isn’t nearly as homemade as it sounds.
In fact, the ‘forking’ of this potential Nokia doesn’t involve any cutlery at all – confusing, right? – but actually refers to the way in which the Android OS is redeveloped using the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code – similar to the way in which Amazon uses Android hardware for its Kindle devices.
Supposed images of the Nokia phone were published by Evan Blass, who is responsible for the @evleaks Twitter account and is notable for past handset leaks.
Nokia has struggled to compete in the budget smartphone market, after its Asha handset on the company’s own Symbian OS suffered heavily from its lack of apps. Nokia will be hoping that Normandy will perform much better with Android backing, particularly in China where millions of phones using AOSP are sold every quarter.
Of course, the Nokia Normandy is still very much in the rumours stage, especially considering the overhanging possibility of Nokia’s deal with Microsoft. The cost of developing Normandy for Android will be very high, and Microsoft is unlikely to want to invest in developing an operating system that competes with Windows.
The deal between Microsoft and Nokia’s handset business is far from a done deal, though, and even if it did go ahead Nokia may be able to release Normandy prior to an agreement between the two companies.
So, what do you think of Nokia’s rumoured Normandy project? Could Nokia enjoy a happy union with Android? Or should it partner with Microsoft and concentrate on its Lumia range? Let us know in the comments below.

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With the Moto G, Google is executing Nokia’s strategy better than even Nokia themselves

Google is a dangerous company. Most companies specialize in one thing, make money doing that one thing, and then invest a certain percentage of that money being made into expanding the business. Google, on the other hand, specializes in advertising, and all the money that they make from those little blue links for cheap Canadian prescription drugs is used to provide an inordinate number of services to consumers for nothing.
Enter the Moto G that was announced yesterday at a press event in São Paulo, Brazil. Google took control over Motorola Mobility about a year and a half ago, and they’re already applying the Google mentality to the once giant American mobile phone maker. Because Google prints money thanks to their ad business, they can sell an incredibly capable smartphone for just $179 unsubsidized.
How capable is capable? The Samsung Galaxy S III, launched in early 2012, had a 720p display, quad core processor, and an 8 megapixel camera. It also sold for over $600, though in the US and UK that cost was obfuscated with a two year contract. The Moto G has the same 720p display, albeit smaller and using LCD technology, the same quad core processor, though it’s four ARM Cortex A7 cores instead of four ARM Cortex A9 cores, and a 5 megapixel shooter.
Again, all that for $179. You can buy three Moto G phones for the price of an iPhone 5s and still have over $100 leftover to go out with your mates to the pub or take the misses out for dinner and a movie.
What does any of this have to do with Nokia?
Nokia was the first mobile phone maker to introduce the phrase “the next billion” into the mobile industry’s lexicon. Their thinking was that there’s a huge market out there of people who would love an iPhone 5s or Galaxy S4, but can’t afford one, so “cheap” smartphones like the $150 Nokia Lumia 520 were created.
Those cheap Lumias have been selling, that’s a fact. Nokia’s Q3 2013 financial results say the Finnish firm sold 8.8 million Windows Phones at an average selling price of $190, which is down from the $210 average selling price during the same quarter a year prior. In other words, Nokia knows that the future is cheap handsets, hence the creation of Lumia 520 and the Asha portfolio of feature phones that do more than your typical feature phone, but not enough that you can actually call them smartphones.
With the Moto G, Google says they’re targeting the 500 million people who are going to spend roughly $200 or less on a smartphone during the next 12 months. That’s not exactly “the next billion”, but it’s still a sizable market. On stage, Google called out the elephants in the room, Apple and Samsung, for their strategies of capturing the low-to-mid range segment. Samsung’s Galaxy Fame was mentioned, and mocked, for delivering inferior specifications. And Apple’s iPhone 4 was name checked as being too “old”, leaving consumers with only $200 to spend feeling like they’re relegated to the past.
How should operators feel about the Moto G? If I were in charge of a wireless network, I’d be thrilled. Earlier this year, Open Signal did some research on the relation between the size of a phone’s screen and how much data a person consumes. Their conclusion was that nearly 300 MB of data was consumed for every extra square inch of real estate. Offer your customers a phone with a larger display that’s packed to the gills with what are arguably the best internet services currently in existence, and sit back and watch your customers upgrade their data plans so they can watch more, read more, and chat more.
Looking out into the future, if Google can make a Galaxy S III class phone for $179 and launch it just 18 months after the Galaxy S III hit the market, just think of what we can expect from Motorola this time next year. It might seem hard to imagine now, but a large 1080p smartphone at under $200 that delivers Google’s vision of a connected device will be on store shelves all around the world.
It wasn’t that long ago when you needed to be a businessman to be able to spend several thousands of dollars on a briefcase sized appliance that let you make phone calls while out in the field. Today you can do that with a $25 Nokia phone. The same will happen to smartphones, and the fact that Google is accelerating this trend, because they frankly don’t care about profit and would rather break even, is something to be excited about.
Whether you’re a consumer, an operator, or a developer looking to sell apps, Google executing on the vision Nokia has been talking about for the better part of the last half decade is a welcome thing.

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