This time GSMA has decided to move the show from the middle to the end of February. Finally mobile industry professionals will be able to spend Valentines day with their loved ones, instead of hobnobbing in Barcelona. The weather, hopefully, will be better too.

To help you have productive and fun time in Spain, we have again created the “Event & party calendar for MWC 2012”. It includes press conferences and product launches, interesting keynotes & presentations at MWC conference, and, of course, the list of cool parties to unwind in the evening.

The calendar is still a work in progress. If you would like to include your event, or if you found some incorrect information about something – please leave the info in the comments, e-mail it to mwc12 at unwiredview dot com, or send a tweet to @UVStaska.

See you in Barcelona!

• Guide to Mobile World Congress 2011: Parties, Launches & Events #MWC, #MWC11
• Officially confirmed – Nokia will not exhibit at MWC 2010 in Barcelona
• Oct. 27th European Samsung Galaxy Nexus launch to crash Nokia World party again?
• iPhone 4.0 OS: event based modes, intellingent and scheduled communications
• Netvibes2Go – All Mobile Net in One Place

Like the name suggests, WP8 will have many things in common with the desktop version of Windows 8. As previously rumored, the WP8 kernel won’t be based on WinCE, but Windows 8. Alongside the kernel, the security model, network, video and graphics technologies will all be coming from the desktop edition of the OS.

So what are the main new features of Windows Phone 8?

• support for multi-core processors
• support for 4 screen resolutions (up from one at the moment)
• NFC, including mobile payments and tap-to-share capabilities
• microSD expansion cards
• Windows 8 integration will allow developers to reuse most of their code when porting an app from the desktop to the Phone OS (although what isn’t clearly stated is if that refers to the Windows Phone-like apps in Windows 8, or ‘true’ desktop apps like the ones we use today on Windows 7)
• no more Zune desktop client – it will be replaced by a dedicated app for Windows Phone desktop sync
• Xbox Companion app will have a partner app on Windows 8
• Skydrive will enable seamless sharing between devices (think iCloud)
• 100,000 apps in the Marketplace by the time WP8 launches
• native code support for apps
• app-to-app communication (currently all apps are sandboxed)
• the camera will be based on lens apps – Microsoft providing a basic camera UI that can be skinned by manufacturers or overlaid with viewfinders from third-party apps
• DataSmart will aim to reduce mobile data usage – offering breakdown of data used, including in a live tile of its own, and actively attempting to give Wi-Fi connectivity precedence, automatically connecting to carrier-owned Wi-Fi networks when in range (which sounds like the only actually new thing here). The Local Scout feature inside Bing Maps will help with real-time location of nearby hotspots
• Internet Explorer 10 – again a similar version to its desktop cousin. Interestingly, it may even use a proxy for browsing, a la Opera Mini, reducing the amount of data required to view websites by a claimed 30%
• native BitLocker encryption – 128-bit full hardware accelerated disk encryption and always-on secure boot capabilities
• ‘line-of-business’ apps will be supported – these will be specific, proprietary apps deployed behind company firewalls

We have a few things that don’t quite add up though. Both sources quote the 100,000 number for prospective apps in the Marketplace when Windows Phone 8 launches. And that very well may happen. But will they all be compatible with WP8? Paul Thurrott of WinSuperSite says they will, PocketNow doesn’t mention this.

But what about updates to Windows Phone 8? Will existing Windows Phones all receive the update? Both sources have stayed intriguingly mum on this. Past rumors (started by Eldar Murtazin) said that in fact currently selling Windows Phones will not get updated to WP8. That would be very bad for Microsoft, even if there aren’t really that many WP devices out there right now. It would be bad because it would create the perception of fragmentation, which is a word that has gotten very negative connotations after being thrown at Android every day for the past few months.

Finally, there’s the Skype issue. PocketNow says that Skype will hook directly into the new operating system, allowing Skype calls to behave almost exactly like ‘real’ non-VoIP calls (remember Maemo?).

On the other hand, Paul Thurrott claims that Skype will still be a separate app (but better than now), and it won’t be properly integrated into the OS. It will therefore still be optional.

So it remains to be seen which way Microsoft will take the Skype client for Windows Phone. Skype now being owned by Microsoft you’d expect some tight integration to be in there, but on the other hand that would make carriers across the world quite angry we assume. So it’s a tough balancing act that Microsoft needs to perform in this regard.

Windows Phone 8 will probably arrive in shipping phones in the fourth quarter of this year (or maybe a little earlier, if Microsoft wants to surprise us) so there’s still plenty of time for us to find out all the details that were left out of these leaks. What’s certain is that this will be the biggest update to Windows Phone yet, and it may be the one that has the most impact. With Windows Phone 8, Microsoft will finally have a grown up smartphone operating system on the market (save for actual multitasking, perhaps). So hopefully it will manage to do a lot better, sales-wise, than its predecessors.

• Microsoft buys Skype, promises support for Windows Phone, Xbox and more
• Skype for Windows Mobile removed from Skype’s website
• Skype 3.0 Beta for Windows Mobile released and available for download
• Windows Phone 7 to be launched on October 21 in Europe. AT&T HTC Mondrian revealed in ads
• Skype will come to BlackBerry too

You can now grab one straight from Amazon UK for just £449.41 with free shipping. That’s about £50 cheaper than anywhere else at the moment, and it’s more than £60 less than the price it was going for back when it launched.

Granted that’s not a great price difference, but it’s still early for the Galaxy Nexus. Conceivably it will only be late this year when its successor will appear, and until then, if you’re in the market for a pure Google Nexus device, this is the top of the line (unless of course that higher-spec version shows up in the meantime).

If you’ve become convinced that you absolutely should get a Galaxy Nexus right now, head over to Amazon and do just that.

• Get Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy Nexus for just $99.99, Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX for $199.99
• Samsung Galaxy Tab now only £359 in the UK
• Sprint drops the Nexus S 4G’s price down to $29.99, it’s still free elsewhere
• Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy Nexus can be yours for just $154.99 at LetsTalk (and $149.99 at Amazon)
• Sprint’s Nexus S 4G will be available on May 8 for $199.99

The Galaxy Nexus which is currently the top performer in the NenaMark benchmark has a PowerVR SGX544 GPU under the hood. Which is odd, because the Samsung Galaxy Nexus we know and love has a 1.2 GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4460 CPU that is paired with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU.

The SGX544, in fact, is the GPU that’s sold by TI with its OMAP 4470 platform, announced last year during Mobile World Congress. The OMAP 4470 is, like the 4460, a dual-core part. However, it can go up to 1.8 GHz clocks, as opposed to its predecessor which is limited to 1.5 GHz (yes, the CPU in the Galaxy Nexus is effectively underclocked – for better battery life, we assume).

But that’s not the best part about the OMAP 4470. The SGX544 graphics chip apparently delivers performance up to 2.5 times better than that of the SGX540. The model number revision might indicate otherwise, but this is one graphics powerhouse compared to its predecessor.

Which brings us back to the aforementioned benchmark. Now sure, someone may have spoofed that device’s name (and this isn’t really a Galaxy Nexus after all). There’s also a small chance that someone at TI is testing their new processor using Galaxy Nexus hardware. Or someone could have spoofed those GPU results (although that’s far less likely, for it’s quite complicated). So, keeping all of that in mind, whilst having your average grain of salt nearby… consider that this could mean we’re about to see a new Galaxy Nexus arrive on the market with upgraded specs.

We doubt anything but the processor and GPU will be changed, but even so this would clearly be a better performing device than the currently selling Galaxy Nexus. We don’t know what clock speed Google and Samsung will choose in this version, but it’s probably safe to assume it won’t be the maximum 1.8 GHz (just like with the OMAP 4460 they didn’t go for the maximum of 1.5 GHz). That said, we may be seeing a jump in clock speed to 1.5 GHz. That together with the major GPU peformance improvements means this prospective device will be a very fast one.

Interestingly, Sprint has omitted the CPU and GPU specs from all its mentions of its upcoming Galaxy Nexus. So could what we saw in this benchmark actually be Sprint’s slightly tweaked version of the new pure Google phone? Maybe. We just can’t be sure at this point. But if there is a new and improved Galaxy Nexus on its way to the market (be it to Sprint or elsewhere), we’re bound to see many more leaks regarding it very soon. So stay tuned.

Via Droid Life

• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus may be in the works
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus press photo leaked, it’s running Ice Cream Sandwich
• Best Buy refers to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as the Nexus Prime 4G LTE in flyer
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus to be launched in India only in March?
• New PowerVR chip could make way for HD iPhone in the future

And it is a mixed bag of goods. On the surface, the result looks pretty good, and it seems that Nokia managed to stop the free fall it experienced in the first half of last year.

But if you look closer at the reported numbers and guidance for the next quarter – things look a lot bleaker.

Nokia Q4 results. The bright side

The number that impressed me the most – was the the amount of the smartphones Nokia was able to ship in Q4. 19.6 million. It is a huge drop from 28.6 million  in the same quarter last year. But it is a huge improvement over the sales crash Nokia experienced in the beginning of this year. Which should indicate that they managed to stop the decline in smartphone volumes in Q3, at 16.8 million level, and now are back to growth again. Depending on how the final numbers in total smartphone shipments pan out, Nokia may have even kept the market share at Q3 level, or gained a point there. Which would be the first time in 15 months. And they finally stopped the price erosion in their smartphones, with average device selling price rising from 131 Euro in Q3 to 140 in Q4.

Another bright spot comes from Nokia’s Mobile Phones unit. They sold almost the same amount of feature phones in Q4 2011 as they did in Q4 2010. And they increased units shipped by 5% from Q3, while keeping ASP at third quarter levels of 32 EUR. At this point in time, Nokia’s mobile phone unit looks like the healthiest part of the company, and the only sustainably profitable business division of Nokia. As Tero Kuittinen noticed at Forbes – Nokia’s $40 feature phones are now vastly more profitable then Sony Ericsson’s or Motorola’s Android smartphones. And while most mobile phone vendors (except Samsung) abandoned feature phone development, Nokia is increasing R&D investments and earning good money from them. The income generated by mobile phone division might be the only thing that keeps company afloat through the transition, until Windows phone strategy starts bearing fruits.

And even if Windows Phone does not pan out for Nokia, the increased R&D investment and development of next generation Meltemi OS with Qt and Swipe interface on top – might be what saves company from going under. Feature phones as a category might be going away in a few years, but cheap phones most certainly aren’t. If Nokia can create a competitive smart OS for cheap mobile computing devices, and make money selling them – they might buy some time while they explore options of how to get back to the more lucrative part of the market.

Which brings us to the part of earnings report we’ve been waiting the most. The sales of the new Nokia Lumia Windows Phones.

According to Nokia press release – they have shipped “well over 1 million Lumia devices to date”. Given the limited time and market footprint Nokia had, the number looks promising. In fact, as I told you back in November, anything between 1 and 1.5 million units shipped – will be an extremely good result.

Unfortunately, upon closer examination, things are not as great as they seem.

Nokia Q4 results. The dark side

That “well over 1 million Lumias shipped to date” is just a PR trick by Nokia. Because that “to date” part includes not only phones in Q4 2011, but also those shipped between Jan. 1st and 26th, this year.

There’s no doubt that their trick worked. If you read the headlines about Nokia quarterly results, 90% of them report that 1 million, when the actual Lumia shipments were somewhere between 500K and 700K. Nokia will probably be able to build on that next quarter, without disclosing actual sales. And inserting a line with “Lumia sales grew 200% or 300% or 400% in Q1” in their next earnings release.

But that does not change the fact that it was just a trick. And, because of the expectations they created since Nokia World, the actual Q4 Lumia sales were a big disappointment. I wish they were more careful with the expectations game all along, and did not have to resort to PR trickery to paint things better then they are. In the grand scheme of things the number of Lumias they managed to sell in the first 7 weeks is not that important. Staying honest and straightforward, and constantly surprising us to the upside – is. Nokia should just stop the stupid trickery and number painting, and let us sort things out for ourselves.

Another really worrying bit of info in the earnings report was in Nokia’s guidance for the next quarter. Which was not good.

According to Nokia – they expect a higher then normal seasonal decline in Devices&Services net sales. This decline is mainly due to the:

• “pressure in Symbian, which is where we see now in percentage terms the greatest risk of sequential unit decline”.
• lower than seasonal decline in OpEx because of continuing investments Lumia marketing and support, as well as R&D investments in Mobile Phones division
• while the ramp up of the sales of new Windows Phones is too slow to offset the losses in Symbian phones in Q3.

All this will lead to a significant drop in non IFRS operating margin in Devices&Services – from 4.9% in Q4 to somewhere between +2% and –2% in Q1.

Translated from corporate speak, that means that Nokia will probably lose a boatload of money in smartphone division in Q1. And mobile phones may not be enough to keep company profitable on even non-IFRS basis. Including various charges and other non-IFRS items, Nokia may record a loss that will be higher 485 million Euro we saw in Q2 2011.

These loses will come mainly due to the big decline in Symbian smartphone shipments. I am not sure what Nokia means by “greater than normal seasonal decline”, But if last year’s 14% drop in smartphone shipments between Q4 and Q1 was a normal seasonal decline, it will be pretty bad. The 14% decline will bring Nokia smartphones to Q3 16.8 million unit level, and if it’s more then that, it may dip well below that. Which will mean that even with Lumia handsets selling for 5 months in many markets, Nokia is still not able to stem the decline in its smartphone shipments.

To be fair – the Q1 2012 comparisons to Q4 2012 will not be easy to every other smartphone maker too. One of the reasons for those huge upside surprises we saw from Apple and Samsung in Christmas quarter, was because Q4 lasted a week longer then usual last year. Also the Chinese New Year gift giving season started earlier and impacted overall sales already last year. Which means that quite a bit of the smartphone sales in Q4, were effectively borrowed from Q1. So in January-March quarter we may see the first sequential decline in smartphone market in years.

But neither the overall market decline, nor PR tricks with triple digit growth in Lumia sales will be enough to cover/spin a whopper of bad quarter that Nokia will announce in April.

The only thing that can cushion the blow, will be a very positive guidance for the rest of the year or at least next quarter. By then Lumia phones will be in many more markets, including Lumia 900 on AT&T, and, hopefully, another Lumia on Verizon or Sprint. Also, Windows Phone Tango and lower priced Lumia phones for many more countries should be out by then, as should the next Lumia flagship.

Maybe that will be enough, maybe not. One thing is for sure, while Q3 and especially Q4 numbers came in pretty good for Nokia, it surely wasn’t the turnaround we’ve been waiting for. The first half of 2012 is shaping up to be as bad as the first half of 2011.

The good news is – Nokia does have enough cash, resources and (still) profitable Mobile Phones division to weather this more or less intact. But the time seems to be running out and we better see some real turn around by the end of this year, at latest.

• Compal to start delivery of Windows Phones to Nokia in September. 2 million units ordered for Q4 2011
• Samsung Q2, 2011: no more then 16.7M smartphones shipped. It’s still #3, behind Apple and Nokia
• Nokia Q4 2010 Earnings. Nokia confirms 5+mil Symbian^3 phones shipped. Loses a lot of marketshare
• Gartner: cell phone sales declined 6% in Q2 2009, smartphone sales grew 27%
• Nokia’s 2011 results are out. Less than 2 million Lumia Windows Phone handsets sold to date

Unfortunately, with each quarterly report, Sammy is becoming more and more secretive about its mobile and smart phone shipment numbers. Leaving it to analyst houses to provide us with educated guesses. Which, for July-September quarter in smartphones, ranged from 23.6 million (IDC) to 27.8 million (Strategy Analytics) units shipped.

The only thing everyone agreed on in Q3, was that Samsung has passed Apple to become the #1 smartphone maker in the world. But they didn’t hold the top smartphone vendor title for long.

Today Samsung was strangely precise in telling us about its smartphone growth in Q4 2011. Approximately 30% QoQ. Which can be 29.8 or 30.2 – but let’s not get too greedy here. By being this precise – Samsung gives us little room for interpretation about what the analyst estimates about its smartphone shipments will be next week:

• Canalys – 35.5M units shipped
• IDC – 30.6M units shipped
• iSupply – 35.5M units shipped
• Gartner – 31.2M units sold (this number can be a bit different, since Gartner tracks actual units sold)
• Strategy Analytics – 36.1M units shipped

The actual reported numbers may differ a bit (probably +-0.5M), depending on how the analyst interprets  the “approximate” part of 30% increase.

Still, whichever way you look at it, after a monster Christmas quarter, Apple is again #1 smartphone maker in the world. In Q4. For the full year 2011, estimates of who owns the #1 spot will probably depend on how much particular analyst house likes Samsung.

Another interesting newsbit at Sammy’s earnings conference call, was their guidance for the overall 2012 mobile phone volume growth. Which they expect to be in the mid single digits. From a basis of “more then 300 million” phones shipped  in 2011.

Which means that this year Samsung may overtake Nokia as the top mobile phone maker in the world, but  I think it is unlikely. It will depend a lot on how much/whether Nokia mobile device shipments will fall in 2012. Nokia has slowed its overall phone unit volume decline to a trickle in the second half of 2011, and Samsung’s mid single digits growth should be too small to catch up with Finns before next year.

Overall, even though it’s again #2 both in smartphones and dumb phones, Samsung is killing it in wireless. During Christmas quarter, its mobile phone unit sales grew 54% YoY – to 17.82 trillion Won ($15.46 billion), while profits for all telecoms division increased by 79% to 2.64 trillion Won ($2.37B).

You can find official Samsung numbers here

• Gartner: cell phone sales declined 6% in Q2 2009, smartphone sales grew 27%
• Most smartphones now have touchscreens; Android shipments grew 1074% YoY
• Samsung is a fastest growing smartphone maker in the world, 500% YoY, 16% QoQ growth
• Mobile phone market declined by almost 13% in Q4 2008
• Samsung Q2, 2011: no more then 16.7M smartphones shipped. It’s still #3, behind Apple and Nokia

The growth in total Android activations is interesting. Google finished the third quarter of 2011 with 190 million devices activated. However, on November 15, Google announced that it had activated 200 million devices.

So from October 1 to December 31, Google added 60 million Android devices. From November 15 to December 31 though, Google added 50 million devices. That leaves 10 million devices activated from October 1 to November 15, at an average rate of 217,000 devices activated per day.

Google obviously didn’t publicize this number. In fact, on October 18 it said that there were still 550,000 devices activated per day (the same amount first reported in July). Perhaps at that point there were, only for the number to absolutely plunge between then and November 15. We’ll never know. It does however seem that Google’s numbers shouldn’t be taken 100% seriously all the time (at least those pertaining to daily activations).

So then everything changed for the better in the second half of Q4, understandably because of the holiday shopping season and the many phone and tablet launches that catered to it. The average number of Android devices activated from November 16 to December 31 is a whopping 1,08 million per day. And that’s average. Which means that some days it was much higher. In fact we already know that during the holiday weekend, 3.7 million Android devices were activated. Subtracting those from the total still gives us an average of 1,05 million devices activated per day from November 15 to December 31.

Now after the holidays passed, it’s clear that this daily activation number went down. Otherwise, Google would have triumphantly announced today that it’s activating more than a million devices per day, way ahead of our projection of that happening (for sustained periods of time) by the end of the second quarter of this year. Still, for much of the second half of Q4 2011, Android activations were above 1 million per day. That’s just incredible.

You do have to keep something in mind though. Google never reports the exact number of activated devices. It’s always “over x”. So for example, Google has now told us that more than 250 million devices have been activated by the end of Q4. So that could be 257 million, but Google used the nicely-sounding round number. Similarly, 190 million could have been 193 million, and 200 million could have actually been 208 million. These differences seem minor, but they change all the above calculations – a lot. So when you read the estimates above, understand that they are just that – estimations made without the actual 100% accurate numbers. The purpose of this exercise wasn’t to give you an entirely accurate number of Android activations over the fourth quarter (since that’s impossible without Google’s help), but to give you a rough impression of Android’s continued success.

Now on to the other big number of the day. Google has also let us know that there have been more than 11 billion app downloads from the Android Market so far. That number is up by 1 billion since the beginning of December and shows us that the Market is progressing just fine. Naturally, as more people buy or get Android devices (or find out they’re actually good for more than just calling and texting), the Market gets used more.

• Record-breaking 3.7 million Android devices were activated this past weekend, iOS close by
• Google moves Nexus Prime launch to October 19. Says it activated 55 million Android devices in Q3
• Google now activates 550K Androids per day. 135 million devices sold. Market reaches 250,000 apps
• Google now activates 350,000 Android devices daily. 3 billion Android apps installed around the world
• More than 300,000 Android phones activated each day, says Andy Rubin

See, up until now the white versions of the tablets have retained the black front fascia, with only the back side being clad in white. But that may change in the future. A Galaxy Tab 10.1 and a Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus with the front bezel in white as well have just been spotted in Vietnam. Here they are:

Definitely… whiter than the currently selling models. For fans of the color, that’s great news. Unfortunately though, we don’t know exactly when these will be in stores just yet. But that info should be leaked (or officially announced) soon, and we’ll let you know when that happens.

Via VnExpress Via GSMArena

• White Samsung Galaxy W revealed in photo
• White Nokia N9 with 64 GB of storage makes its worldwide debut in Finland, priced at €629
• White Samsung Galaxy S II headed to Vodafone UK
• White Samsung Galaxy S II now available in the UK for £492 SIM-free
• White Samsung Galaxy Nexus officially announced, hits the streets in the UK on February 13

So what happened to the Samsung Mandel (or Mendel, as we’ve seen it referred to once before)? Well, it may still be headed to AT&T, regardless of the fact that it didn’t get unveiled at CES for whatever reason. Remember, Mandel/Mendel is just the codename, so this phone’s actual shipping name will be different.

The Samsung Mandel may have been spotted in a UserAgentProfile (UAProf) document by PocketNow. It looks like its model number will be SGH-i667. This is clearly a Windows Phone, since its browser is Internet Explorer. Unsurprisingly, the screen resolution is 800×480. The i667 also has LTE support, which was pretty much a given for the Mandel.

So while it’s not clear why the Mandel wasn’t unveiled this week, there still is some hope that it will make its way to an AT&T store near you in the coming months. After all, the Lumia 900 and the Titan II aren’t exactly going to be available immediately anyway.

• HTC Radiant for AT&T (Windows Phone with LTE) pictured
• HTC Radiant and Samsung Mandel 4G LTE Windows Phones will arrive in the US in early 2012
• Internet Explorer Mobile 6 coming soon, features announced
• AT&T’s HTC Titan II hits the FCC with LTE in tow
• Rumor: Nokia Lumia 910 with 12 MP camera will be available in Europe in May

Especially up there at the top.

Could you please shut up now, and let the results of your work speak for themselves? Instead of creating wildly unrealistic expectations that are bound to backfire when not met.

You’ve been doing such a great job managing expectations prior to Nokia World and the launch of first Lumia handsets:

• Never committing to the first Windows Phone launch and shipment dates
• Insisting that first Nokia Windows Phones, even if they are launched in 2011, will not ship in big volumes. They will be there more to enter the market, show presence. Establish a beachhead as you say now. That’s it. Nobody expected any huge sales this year
• We knew that you will have something with WP Mango to show at Nokia World. But having the first phone ship few weeks after the announcement was a welcome surprise. Having the second one ready 3 weeks later, was even better

All in all, at Nokia World you did surprise us to the upside. For the first time in years you under promised and then over delivered.

And then you got carried away:

• It started small – with that clip of Nokia Lumia 800 being put in a box in Salo factory and shipped to the carrier stores. It was a neat trick for the keynote. The problem – it was just a trick. You then took 3 weeks to deliver the first Lumias to paying customers. And it certainly shouldn’t take 21 days for the phone shipped from Finland to get to the store in the U.K.
• Even before that, you started talking about enormous multi multi million marketing budgets, which are several times bigger than for any other Nokia product launch.
• And started touting unprecedented carrier and retail support. With 31 “operator and retail” partners in 6 European countries. Which, while technically may be true, was an exaggeration as perceived by the press and public. In most of Europe – carrier support is the key, while retailers matter much much less. Lumping both of them into one big number might make it more impressive to brag about, but does not help much beyond that. And, by my count, on Nov. 23d – one week after launch – you only had 14 carriers with Lumia on display.
• Then you started talking about record breaking Lumia 800 pre-orders. While the fact that those huge numbers were only on one network, and a part of the free XBOX offer that came with a new Lumia contract, was mostly drowned out by the noise.
• After that came reports on various Nokia and Windows phone fan blogs that Lumia 800 is the most popular phone on many carrier websites. Most of the  reports had no relation to actual sales, but were promoted by your employees nevertheless.

All of this has created huge expectations for Nokia Lumia sales in Q4 2011.

We, tech press folks and some analysts, are pretty lazy crowd. When looking at what to expect from a new product launch, we will gladly fall back to something that we can easily compare it too. And what’s easier to compare Nokia’s Lumia launch to, then Symbian^3/Nokia N8 in Q4 2010? Both Lumia and S^3 were next generation devices. Both started shipping in the last quarter of the year (more or less). In both cases Nokia touted unprecedented carrier support, huge marketing budgets and record breaking pre-orders.

And we also know how many Symbian^3 devices you sold in Q4 2010 – 5 million. Which gives us a good benchmark of Nokia’s distribution and marketing strength for a new product line. The same 5 million.  Some of us may take into account the shorter period of sales – launch in mid of the quarter instead of the beginning. But it still conditions us to expect  2 million+ of Lumias sold in 2011. And that does not even account for the overall smartphone market growth.

Which is all great, if you can hit those numbers. But a closer look into when and how Nokia Lumia 800 was sold during Q4, makes me think that 5 million is out of the question and even 2 million is highly unlikely. Given that during Lumia 900 launch at CES you did not mention how Nokia Windows Phones fared last year, the actual sales must be pretty low.

Which would have been OK, if you kept to that pre-Nokia World “beachhead establishment”, “not focused on high volumes yet” line, and haven’t hyped up expectations to such crazy levels. You have built enough of goodwill and understanding that implementing the new Windows Phone strategy takes time.

But now, if the actual sales numbers are as low as I think they are, you can expect a barrage of negative headlines about how Nokia Windows Phone strategy is failing, after you report results on January 26th. All that goodwill you’ve built up will be gone, and renewed excuses that everything is good and you never planned for big Lumia volumes in 2011 anyway, will sound pretty hollow.

Your sales&marketing people should have known and forecasted all this even before the first Lumia left Salo factory. Why the heck would you shoot yourself in the foot this way?

Which brings me to the U.S. Lumia launch. I can understand Jo Harlow hinting about frequent Windows Phone releases next year. You have a full year to work on it, and you can probably meet and even exceed that promise. But what the heck Chris Weber was thinking when he promised that “Rolling Thunder” for CES? Blown up Lumia 800 with LTE antenna, on one U.S. carrier? That’ it? That’s your rolling thunder? Really?

While at it, can you please stop taking pot shots at iPhone? You know – stuff like Niels Munksgaard’s “youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones” , or Marko Ahtisaari’s “iPhone UI is becoming more dated as we speak”. Until you have some Lumia sales numbers to impress us with, quips like that just make you look desperate and out of touch. It’s not yet on the level of Ballmer’s famous iPhone dissing in 2007, but you may get there pretty quick, if you continue this nonsense. Just forget about iPhone and Android when talking on the record, and focus on your own strengths.

And could you also ease up on that “Real Windows Phone” thing? Yes, it’s a catchy phrase, and I know Nokia is doing its best job on Windows Phone. But with 16 megapixel camera to brag about, HTC Titan 2 looks no less real to me than Lumia 900.

(Btw, what’s with that camera thing? With Nokia’s prowess and experience in digital imaging, close ties and work you are doing with Microsoft – how the heck HTC was able to leapfrog you in Windows Phone camera flagship department? At least in megapixel count – we’ll have to wait for some real tests  to see about picture quality).

All things considered, you seem to be doing quite OK with the implementation of your new Windows Phone strategy. Better then many expected when you announced it on February 11th, last year. Do brag about that. Point it to everyone who cares to listen. Hype the best features of your new Lumia phones through the roof.

Just try to keep it real were future promises and expectations are concerned. And let the results speak for themselves.

It’s always better to under promise and over deliver.

• Nokia Lumia 710 – some thoughts and hands-on
• Nokia Lumia 800 vs Samsung Galaxy S2 vs iPhone 4S/4 price comparison and NWP shipment expectations
• Compal to start delivery of Windows Phones to Nokia in September. 2 million units ordered for Q4 2011
• AT&T Nokia Ace (Lumia 900) will get $100 million marketing campaign
• Nokia Q4 2011 results. PR lipstick on the approaching trouble

In the past few days, we’ve seen many rumors about the next iPad, but none of those said anything about its processor. This bit of leaked info, though, may prove to be very good news for would-be buyers of Apple’s next-gen mobile hardware.

9to5Mac found references to a quad-core processor in the latest iOS 5.1 beta’s processing-core management software. The references come thanks to a hidden panel that describes cores which are supported by iOS devices.

In the image above, “/cores/core.3″ almost certainly refers to a quad-core CPU architecture. That’s because references to Apple’s dual-core A5 processor are “/cores/core.1″, and single-core CPUs are referred to as “/core/core.0″. Those are the existing naming conventions within Apple’s processing-core management software.

Therefore it’s quite clear that Apple is at the moment testing a quad-core device with iOS 5.1. What makes this more interesting is that if the iPad 3 is to launch in March, as we keep hearing, than it’s clearly being tested right now with Apple’s software. Which, you guessed it, would make this the device with the quad-core processor.

And following last year’s logic, when the iPad 2 first got the dual-core processor that eventually made it to the iPhone 4S, it’s probably not a stretch to think that the next iPhone will sport a quad-core CPU too.

Of course none of this stuff can be proven just yet, but this little detail, if true, certainly makes the next iPad seem a lot more appealing.

• Dual-core 2GHz smartphone coming from Samsung next year?
• Quad-core Meizu MX will be released in May 2012, new UI in tow
• HTC Edge to launch in March or April running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
• Nvidia-powered quad-core smartphones to be showcased at MWC 2012. HTC Edge maybe?
• iPad 3 to come with quad-core A6 processor, LTE?

Let’s start with the leak. ITProPortal has many pictures of what it claims to be the Sony Ericsson Nozomi, which will end up being sold as the Xperia HD (so the ‘Arc’ moniker seems to have been dropped, as we previously heard this would be the Xperia Arc HD).

The Xperia HD will come with a 1280×720 HD touchscreen just like its name implies, a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, a 12 MP camera, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of built-in storage (that’s this model, there may be more with higher capacities), no microSD expansion slot, micro SIM, and it will run Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread. That’s unfortunate, since by the time this thing actually ships, Ice Cream Sandwich will have been on the market for many months.

The lack of expansion slot, combined with just 8 GB of storage and a camera that will surely do 1080p HD video is a bit baffling. Then again, perhaps Sony Ericsson isn’t targeting those who like to shoot videos with their phone – just the picture-takers. Odd are the decisions of phone makers sometimes.

Meanwhile on Facebook, Sony Ericsson itself is continuing a teasing campaign which has started a few days ago. This undoubtedly is supposed to keep fans of the brand interested ahead of an announcement next week during CES. So far the teaser images have showed us various bits of an upcoming device, although you couldn’t really form an opinion on it. Today though, we get our first actual look at the device, even if it’s just its back:

And interestingly, that’s clearly not an Xperia HD/Nozomi/Xperia Arc HD. Just compare the camera and LED flash placement. This means that Sony Ericsson is prepping not one, but two new high-end smartphones for the near future. Perhaps the Xperia Arc HD will be announced during MWC then, and this mystery handset teased on Facebook will make its debut at CES. We say ‘high-end’ because we doubt that Sony Ericsson would have gone through the pain of creating this campaign for anything other than a top of the line phone. Time will tell though.

• New Sony Ericsson Nozomi (Xperia Arc HD) live images leaked alongside more detailed specs
• Sony Ericsson Nozomi official render leaked, dual-core processor all but confirmed
• Sony Ericsson LT26i Nozomi (Xperia Arc HD) smiles for the camera
• New Sony Ericsson Xperia Duo picture leaks, all but confirms the phone’s existence
• Sony Ericsson readies “something big” for next week. Xperia Arc HD and Xperia Ion maybe?

Interestingly, most of these ‘Microsoft will buy Nokia’ rumors tend to come from the same source: Eldar Murtazin, the Russian journalist who has famously leaked the fact that Nokia was going to switch its smartphones to Windows Phone before anyone even considered that it could happen.

Despite not believing that at first, after it actually happened, I vowed never to simply dismiss anything that Mr. Murtazin says again. After all, Nokia switching to WP sounded quite preposterous at the time – yet it did happen. So if Microsoft snatching up Nokia’s smartphone unit sounds absurd right now – well, it may just happen.

Image via IntoMobile

And if it won’t, don’t start shouting that “Eldar was lying!” (as some people like to do). The two companies are talking about this, I’m sure. But those talks don’t always lead to action. So perhaps they’ll eventually decide not to go through with the deal. That doesn’t mean there were never any talks.

Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s take a look at what Eldar Murtazin actually said about this takeover (complete with my comments).

Nokia’s and Microsoft’s head honchos (including Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer) will meet up in Las Vegas (CES is a great excuse apparently) and discuss the deal. It may even get finalized over there. If it goes through, it will happen in the second half of 2012, and will involve Nokia’s smartphone R&D, as well as two plants.

The Nokia brand wouldn’t be used by the new unit under Microsoft. Instead, Microsoft will presumably sell own-brand Windows Phones. This may have been a requirement by Stephen Elop (perhaps to not confuse consumers).

That’s because Nokia will continue to exist (sans smartphones, at first) and make and sell ‘dumbphones’ (featurephones). They’ll also have an updated device category which will in the future compete with smartphones (perhaps a new ‘smart’ OS born out of S40 or the likes).

Apparently it’s all up to Microsoft right now. If they decide to go through with the deal, it will happen. If not, it won’t. But Nokia seems to be pretty much happy with the state of what has already been negotiated. That said, Microsoft is still unsure if it actually needs hardware R&D and manufacturing plants in-house. However, it sure would like to get its hands on Nokia’s smartphone-related patents (to use against Android makers, undoubtedly).

Nokia’s new Chairman will be Risto Siilasmaa, who will replace Jorma Ollila. His main goal will be to finalize this deal and then find a CEO to replace Stephen Elop with. That’s because Elop will resign in 2012 (supposedly heading back to the Microsoft mothership if the deal goes through).

Microsoft partners aren’t happy with the state of Windows Phone, yet Microsoft still believes in it and would like it to be its next successful product, replicating the Xbox. Google’s acquisition of Motorola makes for a good example of hardware-software integration in this space, along with Apple of course. An example that Microsoft could decide to follow. After all, they’ve been copying (nay, emulating) Apple’s mobile unit in every other respect (just consider how locked-down the entire WP experience is, and don’t forget Zune), so going for that famous Apple tight integration next just makes sense.

Just like the Nokia-Microsoft deal over Windows Phone did. All of these things make a lot of sense for Microsoft. If you’re wondering if they’ve ever made any sense for Nokia, that’s a good question.

One way or the other, this year we’re bound to find out whether Elop was in fact a trojan horse planted inside Nokia just to make it cheaper so Microsoft could buy a part of it. That’s exciting.

• Elop: Rumors about Nokia selling its mobile business to Microsoft are baseless
• Nokia once again denies rumored smartphone division sale to Microsoft
• Nokia to start talking to Microsoft about phone unit sale next week
• The first Nokia Windows Phone (Sea Ray) unveiled by Stephen Elop?
• New Nokia Windows Phone 7 concept – would you buy this?

We also reveal which phone we believe comes on top in this test, and draw some other interesting conclusions at the very end. One thing is for sure: all three are well rounded high-end smartphones that are interesting and unique in their own right.

Read on to find out more.

User interface

With Galaxy Nexus, iPhone 4S and Lumia 800 on hand, we’ve got all three major smartphone operating systems present in this test – Android 4.0, iOS5 and Windows Phone 7 respectively. It’s safe to say that the operating system is where the most striking differences will come out that will have big – if not the biggest – impact on your day-to-day experience using the smartphone.

Android 4.0, also codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) by Google, has seen a number of notable changes in the UI in an effort to make the OS more user friendly, and also to unify the mobile and tablet versions of this OS. The underlying structure of Android, including its greatest qualities, remained unchanged. In comparison to the other two players in this test, Android provides user with the richest customization options, most notably with the 5 homescreens that can be populated with useful widgets as well as application shortcuts.

Unlike Android, iOS visually changed very little since 2007 when Apple introduced the iPhone and revolutionized the touchscreen user interface on mobiles. There’s the horizontally scrollable grid of apps and folder, while an omnipresent bar with 4 shortcuts sits near the bottom of the screen.

It’s clear that Apple is still reluctant to wander even half-step away from the winning formula that has simplicity as one of its main draws. With iOS5, however, Apple managed to nab some successful ideas from competitors, most notably the ‘new’ notification center that combines all system and app events into a pull-down window that is extremely reminiscent to that on Android. The change is nevertheless very welcome in iOS5 and iPhone 4S, especially because it fits so organically with the rest of the OS, enriching the already solid user experience.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 follows closely iOS philosophy in simplicity but with its very own tiles inspired user interface. Nokia Lumia 800 ships with Windows Phone 7.5 update, codenamed ‘Mango’. The main idea of this mobile operating system revolves around having everything easily accessible in a vertical grid of live tiles that Microsoft calls Metro UI.

The tiles can be re-organized on the homescreen, and new ones can be quickly added from the application list. In terms of customization, however, WP7 is still quite basic and in a similar league with iOS5. However, if you especially look for a phone with a fresh approach to user interface, and large, easy to read fonts, then Windows Phone 7 is probably the way to go.

While Android remains clearly unbeaten in terms of offering the most freedom in tweaking the look & feel of the system, it also has the steepest learning curve among all three platforms. On the other hand, Windows Phone 7 with Metro UI is not only interesting to look at, but also provides the most intuitive user experience on a mobile phone so far.

Pre-installed apps & services

Android takes the most liberal approach from the three platforms as it allows a more or less traditional method of mass file storage. Just like using a flash memory stick, the user can easily move any kind of content to and from Galaxy Nexus mass memory without the need of dedicated desktop software (provided, you use a Windows PC). The disappointing part is that Galaxy Nexus memory is non-expandable since the phone lacks an SD card slot. The good news – in comparison to previous versions of Android on phones, ICS allows the use of all built-in storage space for app install purposes.

Aside from core Android apps, Galaxy Nexus also unsurprisingly comes pre-loaded with a range of different Google specific apps that most are already familiar with, like GMaps, Google+ or Google Books. There’s nothing else beyond that – after all, Galaxy Nexus is a ‘Google phone’ that is meant to provide a stock Android experience – the user is set free to mold the phone in accordance to his or hers liking.

The iPhone 4S is closely tied to iTunes ecosystem, and the desktop app is the central hub for syncing content wirelessly or via USB. Among pre-installed regulars like Google Maps, Safari web browser or music player, there’re also some new services from Apple including iCloud, iMessage and Siri.

As the name already implies, iCloud is cloud-based content management service that comes with free 5GB of virtual space for every iSO5 user. The service automatically backs-up and restores user content like contacts, photos, documents and apps, and thus is extremely useful if you own other iDevices with the same Apple ID. Another useful service is iMessage as it enables free instant messaging between iOS5 devices using Wi-Fi or 3G connection. Siri is the more novel feature that is sort of a personal digital assistant that can provide information (like current time, weather or maps directions), set up reminders, record notes (there’s a dictation feature) or play your favorite song on request. But whether Siri will become a serious asset to your mobile experience or ultimately end up as a gimmick – that will depend entirely on you. The built-in social networking integration in iOS5 is limited to Twitter only, so you’ll have to look into some 3rd party solutions for the complete set.

On Windows Phone, content is synced via USB or Wi-Fi connection using Microsoft’s Zune desktop software. Quite annoyingly, there’s no traditional mass storage mode, so transferring local files, such as photos or music, is a no-go without Zune. From notable pre-installed apps, there’s Nokia Maps & Nokia Drive to fill in your digital navigation needs, and XBox Live, that serves as the central hub for gaming on WP7 and syncs with your 360’s Avatar and Achievements.

Document viewing and editing is already built-in and handled by the free Office app. Thanks to SkyDrive integration, documents are also stored in the cloud (user gets 25GB of space for free) where they can be easily shared between the phone and computer. The email app is extremely straightforward to setup, and allows managing several inboxes from a single place. Built-on social networking features are also well covered, and you can setup Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live accounts that will automatically consolidate with your phonebook. While it might sound rather complicated, the execution as it turns out is pretty slick, but you do need to have use for social networks to really appreciate all those extra features.

From the perspective of built-in features, Nokia Lumia 800 with WP7 shows the strongest performance in this test – there’s barely any need for 3rd party apps to hit the ground running.

However, a developed ecosystem is important above and beyond, and this is where iOS5 on iPhone 4S shines with its cloud support that provides a truly engrossing experience.

Apps

A place where you can browse, buy and download third-party apps for your phone, the app store is an indispensable part of any working smartphone ecosystem. While the ecosystem is designed to keep you engrossed, it’s the constant supply of new apps that keeps the experience fresh and interesting.

Both the Android Market and Apple App Store excel with their incredibly rich libraries, and there’s very little sense in trying to highlight which one is the largest. Android Market has considerably more free apps to offer, while the App Store remains unbeaten in the number of quality gaming tittles, but even there Android is catching up fast.

Comparatively speaking, the most struggling here is Windows Marketplace. Apps and games are usually a great deal more expensive than on other platforms, and the selection, although improving at a steady pace, is nowhere near the app stores from Google or Apple. The importance of this might depend entirely on the user: if you plan on using just a select few 3rd party apps with your Nokia Lumia 800, then Windows Marketplace might even satisfy you completely.

A good idea would be to check the Marketplace website beforehand, to see what is actually there and what is missing. It could very well be that the particular app you know and love on another platform is also present on WP7. Or, at the very least, there’s a decent enough alternative available.

If you love exploring and trying new apps, then Android should be on top of your list. The redesigned Android Market provides a comprehensive overview of apps – new and old alike – and the background installs and updates on Galaxy Nexus happen so effortlessly it’s hard not to recommend Android over other platforms in this section.

Prices

When deciding smartphone to pick as your communications device for the next two years, the price is no minor consideration. , whether you get it for free with 24 monthly payments commitment, or shell out a hefty sum up-front. To help you decide – we checked the prices at which Nokia Lumia 800, Galaxy Nexus and iPhone 4S are available in U.K.

Operator prices in the table are in British Pounds, for the cheapest monthly plan on which you can get your smartphone for free, on 24 month contract. Unlocked prices are from Amazon UK.

Conclusions

As we mentioned early on, all three phones have something unique and worthwhile to offer. That, of course, only makes the final decision harder to make. But, if we absolutely had to pick an overall winner in this test, then it would be the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

The Google phone smashed its competition with a brilliant quality HD screen, impressed with the OS customization options and the vast amount of free apps in the Android Market. It was also the only phone that struck us with that old-school smartphone vibe that seems to be missing on other major platforms. At the same time, Apple iPhone 4S drew us in with its versatile 8 Mpix camera and very tight integration with other iDevices. And, finally, Nokia Lumia 800 won us over with its intuitive user interface, rich built-in features and attractive monoblock design.

It should be obvious by now that none of the phones are universally flawless, and careful deliberation of each platform’s weakness and strengths in the light of user’s priorities is required. Because it’s not just about the hardware that you buy – now the emphasis should be on the software and services that comes along with the phone.

If you already own a Mac, an iPad and watch your movies via Apple TV – the choice is obvious – the iPhone 4S. The new Apple phone will also be the best choice for those who like to explore an incredibly rich app ecosystem available for iOS devices, and who do not mind paying additional £100+ for the privilege.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the best choice if you like to tinker with your mobile device. Various launcher apps, third party firmware and tons of other customization options in an unfettered Google Experience device makes this phone a geek’s dream. It’s also for those who rely a lot on various Google cloud services. You simply won’t get a better integration of those features anywhere else. If you think that the bigger the display the better the device – Galaxy Nexus is also the best choice. But be warned – the screen real estate comes at a price. The Google flagship is huge, and one hand operation can be a challenge even for the biggest hands.

Nokia Lumia 800 is the best device if you are just moving into smartphones after dumping your good old feature phone, and wouldn’t mind saving £100 while still getting a first class smartphone experience. Windows Phone 7 OS is super simple to set up and use even if you are a complete newbie. It also has the best Facebook integration around. So, if you have a lot of FB friends, you won’t go wrong with new Lumia. The same for Microsoft Office and XBox integration.

Choosing which platform you will invest in – Android, iOS or Windows Phone – can have an enormous influence over what phones you will continue buying in the future. So it goes without saying – choose wisely – and, on top of all, enjoy!

• iPhone to get Google Maps with free navigation?
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs Nokia Lumia 800 vs iPhone 4S Comparison/Review. Part 1 – Hardware & Performance
• Nokia Lumia 710 – some thoughts and hands-on
• More info on iPhone 4.0 OS: multitasking via Expose-like interface
• Nokia S60 Devices to get touch interface next year

Samsung Galaxy Nexus represented Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, iPhone 4S stood for Apple’s iOS 5 and Nokia Lumia 800 for Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.

In the first part of this comparison/review we look we checked out the device hardware and performance. In the second part tomorrow we will look at software and features.

Design & Ergonomics

The Galaxy Nexus remains true to its Samsung roots as it is mainly based on different kinds of plastic. The build materials aren’t necessarily cheap but rather very uninspiring, especially for a high-end device. The design is also kept very simple, where the only diversity comes from the textured battery cover, while the front of the device is completely bare and button-less. The phone sits quite nicely in palms thanks to the slight hump at the back, but due to the enormous size of the screen – 4.65 inches – the overall usability takes a hit.

Clearly ambitious in its undertaking, Apple iPhone 4S takes the design to extreme heights. The phone consists of two glass panels separated by a stainless steel frame (thankfully the antenna problems have been resolved with 4S), which makes the phone pretty to look at, but also quite impractical. The glossy glass surface can easily get smeared with fingerprints, and getting it scratched isn’t too hard either if you’re not careful. On top of all that, the phone is extremely slippery, and we’ve already seen some vivid examples of what happens when the glass structure of iPhone 4 meets its worst enemy: the gravity. These undoubtedly premium materials also contribute towards making 4S the heaviest phone in this test.

Nokia 800 Lumia seems to take the golden middle ground both in terms of built materials and usability. It’s made from a solid block of polycarbonate plastic that is not only eye-catching but also quite practical as it barely leaves any fingerprints. The smooth surface and curved sides of the shell also provide some extra grip in comparison to the other two phones in this test. The screen is also decently sized – 3.7 inches – which makes 800 Lumia neither too small nor too big, so the phone fits nicely in hands and pockets alike.

Display

All three are standard candybar touchscreen phones, and as a result, the quality of the display has an immense impact on their look, feel and usability. Unsurprisingly, the first phone to separate from the rest is the Galaxy Nexus with its sheer size of the screen that literally dwarfs the tiny in comparison screen on the iPhone 4S.

(In this and other display pics: top – Lumia 800, middle – Galaxy Nexus, bottom – iPhone 4S)

But there’s far more to Galaxy Nexus than just the physical dimensions of the screen. Samsung has also equipped Galaxy Nexus with an HD quality screen of 1280 x 720 pixels that can easily rival and surpass Apple’s retina display (960 x 640 pixels). Due to smaller physical size, the 3.5 inch screen on iPhone 4S offers a slightly higher pixel density than Galaxy Nexus (316 vs 330 ppi), but both screens look incredibly sharp and detailed. On the other hand, the WVGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels doesn’t look quite as impressive on Nokia’s 3.7 inch screen.

In terms of picture quality, Samsung Galaxy Nexus with its AMOLED display (in the middle) also comes first, followed closely by Nokia’s own AMOLED display (top), and Apple, unsurprisingly, taking up the rear with its LED-backlit IPS TFT screen. All phones have exceptional viewing angles and great sunlight legibility, but Nokia’s screen comes off as noticeably darker for some reason.

While the physical size could be an issue for some users, it’s easy to recommend Galaxy Nexus HD screen that puts its rivals to shame with the combination of vibrant colors, great contracts and just the sheer amount detail. This especially applies to users who find themselves frequently surfing the web or watching movies on a phone – those particular kind of experiences are head and shoulders above the competition.

Performance

All 3 phones are considered high-end smartphones and are equipped accordingly to run their environments. There are, of course, some notable differences in the hardware amongst the three.

Android has proven to be the more resource heavy OS, and the speedy 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and a whopping 1 GB of RAM really comes into play on Galaxy Nexus to ensure a very fluid and responsive user experience. Unlike most other Android phones with their custom skins or launchers that sip away extra processing power, the Galaxy Nexus additionally benefits from running a clean, unaltered version of the OS.

Apple, and, more recently, Microsoft, has taken a different kind of approach by strictly tailoring hardware to their OS. As a result, Windows Phone 7 runs nicely with the single core 1.4 GHz Scorpion CPU on board the Lumia 800, and no noticeable hiccups were encountered while performing tasks.

The dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 processor on the iPhone 4S, on the other hand, feels more like a response to the market’s shift to dual-core smartphones. The most dramatic improvement over the older generation iPhones is the increased performance in graphically demanding 3D games, and as such, the 4S is well catered towards people who are passionate about this form of digital entertainment.

As mentioned earlier, all phones in this test showed admirable performance on their respective platforms, and opening & switching between apps happened with no interruptions in most cases. If, however, we had to nominate the winner solely judging by its raw computing power, then Galaxy Nexus would take this round.

Camera

By looking at the specs sheet, it appears like Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be not on equal footing in this part of the test. While its hardware in many ways derives from Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S2, the camera has been reduced from 8 to 5 Mpix, which is exactly the same amount as the last Google phone, the Nexus S. On the opposite side of the ring, the other two contestants share a similarity for once as they both are keen to show off their cameras in the same 8Mpix league.

Despite the inferior megapixel count, the underlying improvements in Galaxy Nexus camera in comparison to its predecessor were enough to make the end result look good. Even more so, the quality of the still shots is fairly acceptable in comparison to the other 2 phones in this test.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Apple iPhone 4S

Nokia 800 Lumia

The biggest disappointment, and surprise, comes from Nokia Lumia 800 – the Finns usually put a lot more effort in their smartphone cameras. On the surface, the photos taken with Lumia 800 appear to be OK, but closer inspection reveals that some finer detail is washed away. Could that perhaps be noticeably improved with subsequent software updates? Only time will tell.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Apple iPhone 4S

Nokia 800 Lumia

The camera interface is pretty straightforward and easy to use on all 3 phones, but Nokia does earn a few points back with its more expansive settings that allow tweaking things like white balance, contract, saturation and ISO. In comparison, the Galaxy Nexus and especially iPhone 4S camera settings are very bland, but nothing some 3rd party apps couldn’t fix.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Apple iPhone 4S

Nokia 800 Lumia

Due to the very limiting dimensions of phones, the built-in cameras have always been about having the right compromises. In that respect, the iPhone 4S camera, even though far from showing flawless performance, did manage to deliver the most consistent results throughout the tests. More often than not, this 8Mpix shooter from Apple impressed me with its rich colors and sharp detail, and the ability to take HDR pics right from the start proved to be the icing on the cake.

Battery life

Depending on the user, the results here can vary drastically. The 1430 mAh Li-Po battery took iPhone 4S to the top position in our tests, giving almost 2 full days of moderate usage. That feat was followed with solid 1.5 days from Nokia Lumia 800 with its 1450 mAh battery. Despite having the beefiest battery – 1750 mAh – Galaxy Nexus came in last with an up-time of slightly above one day. It didn’t do too bad – in fact, with its massive screen, the Android could have fared much worse than it actually did.

Also worth noting, Galaxy Nexus is the only phone in this test with a replaceable battery. So, if you’re used to prolonging your phone’s life with an extra battery pack or two, you should take that into a serious consideration.

____________________________

That’s about it for the hardware bit of our Galaxy Nexus vs Lumia 800 vs iPhone 4S review. Check back tomorrow for the second part, where we take a closer look into what makes these devices tick – the software and features inside.

• Verizon exclusive Samsung Galaxy Nexus gets its full specs leaked ahead of October 11 unveiling
• Samsung Galaxy S II unsurprisingly passes drop test that shatters the iPhone 4S
• Some Nokia Lumia 800 phones have battery issues, software update coming soon
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs Nokia Lumia 800 vs iPhone 4S Comparison/Review. Part 2–Sofware, UX&Conclusions
• The first Google Nexus One review shows up

According to Google’s mobile chief, they are now activating 700K Android devices a day. And, just to dispel any doubts that are indeed all new handsets and tablets:

..and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don’t count re-sold devices), and “activations” means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service.

To be fair to those of us who thought that Android growth had already peaked, Google itself is somewhat to blame for creating the appearance of a slowdown. Android daily activations reached 550K a day level on July 14th and stayed there at least until Dec. 7th. When Eric Schmidt used the same 550K data point in his LeWeb conference keynote. Almost 5 months without any reported growth is a long time.

So what happened in three weeks between Dec. 07 and today, to add additional 150K new Android devices to daily activation count? Holiday Shopping Season, most likely.

To make new claim about daily Android device activations, Google has to observe that number for a certain number of days. So in the beginning of December, less then 2 weeks after Black Friday/ Cyber Monday, it was probably too early to give any solid growth updates. But sometime in December, with Christmas gift shopping kicking into high gear all over Western Hemisphere, Android device activations topped 700K a day, and are staying there for a while now.

Looking back to the days when the explosive Android growth just started, it has been exhibiting the same pattern for 2 years in a row now:

• From January to March, there ‘s little to no growth in daily activations
• Between April and August– when Android flagships announced during CES and Mobile World Congress start shipping- we get a huge jump in Android activation count. In 2010 daily activations jumped from 60K in April to 200K in August (140K unit, 230% growth). Between April and July this year, Android went from 350K to 550K (200K additional daily units and 57% growth).
• August – December, a period of little to no growth again, until Christmas Shopping Season starts
• December – a smaller, but still impressive jump in Android device activation numbers. In 2010 it increased from 200K a day to 300K (+100K, 50% growth), this year – from 550K to 700K (+150K, 27% growth)

To see where Android daily activations may get next year, if the same growth patterns continue, I plotted the numbers Google already gave us. Looks like by the end of  Q2 2012, new Android device additions can easily top 1 million units a day.

Overall,  the relative Android growth is slowing down. In 2010 Google’s mobile OS grew almost 1000%, this year the growth is “only” 133%. But that’s just the law of big numbers. In absolute terms Android continues to grow at an amazing rate. During 2010 Google added 240K new devices to Android daily activation count. This year – the growth is 400K. To manage this in Q4 2011, when Google has to compete for every customer against newly released iPhone 4S, plus cheaper iPhone 4/3GS, is even more impressive feat.

While I expected Android absolute numbers to grow by a lot, I must I admit I was too skeptical about it last year. The actual daily activations topped even the optimistic part of my range by 100K. I thought that other platforms – Symbian, Windows Phone or Bada – will slow the Android onslaught, but none of them managed to put a dent into Google’s OS growth.

The mobile device market is not infinite, and Android will reach its saturation level sometime. But I have to admit that I have no idea when it will happen. The pressures of patent litigation, and more skeptical carrier and vendor attitude is still there. But so far Android seems to be resilient to them, and anything else competitors throw at it. So I will have to see a much more clear break in Android growth patterns before proclaiming the slowdown next time.

Getting back to the newly reinvigorated Android growth. Here’s a quick take about the winners and losers among vendors in Q4 2011:

• Q4 was the launch quarter of the next generation iPhone 4S. Despite the pent up demand and  launch hype, much wider carrier and price tier availability, iPhone failed to have meaningful impact on overall Android device sales growth. At this point in time these two platforms are growing together, mostly taking the sales from everyone else, but not each other.
• The big winners among Android vendors this quarter will be Motorola and Samsung
• Motorola’s new Droid RAZR is the main Verizon smartphone for the Holiday Season, and, by all indications, a huge hit. Its international version is also quite competitive in those markets where the device was released. Expect some nice upside surprise when Motorola reports Q4 numbers in January
• Samsung’s Galaxy S2 flagship continues to rule the sales charts of most operators worldwide, together with iPhone 4S. With smartphones like Galaxy Mini, Ace, Y, R and S Plus; Sammy also has an incredibly strong Android device line-up at every price point down to $200. Expect some huge October- December smartphone sales numbers from them. Though whether Samsung will be able to beat huge iPhone shipments and keep #1 smartphone vendor spot, is anyone’s guess. Probably not, but it should be close.
• The big loser among Android vendors will be HTC. Due to the poorly balanced device portfolio in Q4 2011, I expect their Android smartphone sales to drop by about 3 million units. With most of the lost HTC sales going to Samsung and Motorola.

Were you impressed/surprised by 700K Android activations number today? Do you you think they will get to 1 million a day this summer? And how high can Android go?

• Google activated 250 million Androids so far, may have topped 1 million/day in the second half of Q4
• Google now activates 350,000 Android devices daily. 3 billion Android apps installed around the world
• Record-breaking 3.7 million Android devices were activated this past weekend, iOS close by
• Google now activates 550K Androids per day. 135 million devices sold. Market reaches 250,000 apps
• More than 300,000 Android phones activated each day, says Andy Rubin

Releasing once per year, these smartphones break little ground in terms of hardware. Down to its core, however, the fundamental selling point is a substantial one, namely, the premise of a Google phone itself. The outgoing advantages are apparent right off the bat – an Android phone running on the very latest version of the OS, freshly baked with love, directly from Google. But, aside from the premise of being first in line of receiving any future Android updates, what else is there going with Galaxy Nexus? Let’s find out…

Look&feel. Simple yet elegant – all plastic

The unusual shoebox-like package of Galaxy Nexus doesn’t hold any surprises. You basically get what you pay for – that includes a charger/data cable and in-ear type headphones. Take a look at the whole thing getting unboxed along with a short demonstration of the new Android in action:

Google appears to be quite content on using Samsung as its OEM (original equipment manufacturer) to demonstrate the raw power and potential of Android. The previous Google phone, Nexus S, was also manufactured by Samsung, and was based for the most part on South Korean company’s own Galaxy S model. The story with Galaxy Nexus, for the better or the worst, is no different. At least on the paper, it seemed like a no-brainer to base the hardware platform on the widely successful Galaxy SII that came out earlier this year and took the market by storm.

The design on Galaxy Nexus, while some might consider it to be overly simplistic, has a certain touch of class to it. The curved display isn’t very obvious but enough to highlight the little design fidelities that full touchscreen phones have still left.

The build materials are consistent with what we’ve previously seen from Samsung for what seems like eternity now: the plastic encompasses most of the phone, while the front is covered by a solid layer of glass that resists fingerprints surprisingly well (oleophobic coating is probably in action here). Following the curved glass display, the slim profile (8.9 mm) of Galaxy Nexus starts to widen towards the bottom, creating a nice point of counterbalance to keep the phone steady in hand. That is not to say that Galaxy Nexus is very comfortable to operate using just one hand. While the weight remains fairly manageable – 135 g (vs 116 g on SGSII), the hefty dimensions of the screen -4.65 inches – dictates certain loss in ergonomics. Naturally, Galaxy Nexus dwarfs most other phones, for example, Apple iPhone 4S (3.5 inch screen) and Nokia 800 Lumia (3.7 inch screen):

From usability standpoint, the most drastic change is the integration of traditional Android navigational and contextual hardware keys into the display itself, which explains the somewhat odd size of the screen.

Interestingly enough, the effective size of the screen remains identical to that of SGSII. I’ll take a look at those particular changes in Android UI at a greater detail in the software section of the review, but for now, it’s suffice to say you’re actually getting the same 4.3 inch screen, only at a much higher resolution.

Atop the display, there’re the usual suspects: an earpiece is dead centre, while the ambient light and proximity sensors along with a front facing 1.3 Mpix camera are pushed to the right side. And, finally – this came as a pleasant surprise for me – there’s also a white notification LED light hidden in the area below the display.

The lonesome pair of physical controls on Galaxy Nexus reside on either side of the screen. On the left, a decently sized volume rocker stands ground, but on the other side – just where your right thumb should be – the power or screen wake button.

The number of ports are also kept to a bare minimum. There’s a connector for a docking station further down on the right side of the phone, while the rest of the physical output/ input options, including a 3.5 mm headset jack and microUSB port, are collectively residing at the bottom.

The story around the battery cover of Galaxy Nexus is, predictably, quite similar to SGS2. The comparisons are, unfortunately, unavoidable even here, as the plastic piece that covers the battery and SIM card slot radiates cheapness on a level that is not typical to the standards set elsewhere on this elegant looking phone.

However, since Galaxy Nexus lacks an external memory expansion slot, most users probably won’t have to bother with the cover too often. Once the cover is correctly attached, however, it sits surprisingly well, and the slightly rubberised texture creates a reassuring friction with fingers.

The Galaxy Nexus comes equipped with a 1750 mAh Li-Ion battery that with moderate usage should be enough to keep the lights on for around 1.5 days, which is an OK achievement, given the enormous size of the screen. Realistically speaking, you’d want to charge the phone every night to avoid any surprises. And, unless you’re planning for an extended movie viewing session, the Galaxy Nexus should get you through the day.

A screen of beauty

If I had to pitch the biggest selling point for Galaxy Nexus, there would be two – the simply gorgeous Super AMOLED display and Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich. Both of these points almost seem to be made for one another as they complement each other beautifully on Galaxy Nexus.

There isn’t much to say what hasn’t been already said about Super AMOLED display on Samsung Galaxy SII – the two a pretty much on par here, except that Galaxy Nexus utilizes older PenTile screen tech. Nevertheless, the display features amazing level of contracts, wide viewing angles and expressive colours unmatched anywhere else. But there’s more with our newcomer here: its display offers an HD resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, which is a first on a screen that ‘small’. You will, however, lose some of that to the omni-present black bar with three navigational and contextual keys at the bottom, which – as mentioned earlier in the review – marks a departure from the previous versions of Android on smartphones.

The idea of integrated hardware keys seem to have caught me surprisingly quickly – there’s barely any real difference from using the usual capacitive keys below the display. And, thanks to Super AMOLED technology, the dedicated Android command key area seamlessly blends in with the rest of the phone, giving little in terms of distraction.

We also did some comparisons of Galaxy Nexus, iPhone 4S and Nokia Lumia 800 displays. But you will have to wait until our 3-way review of these flagship devices,  coming up next week.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

Galaxy Nexus performs remarkably well with what it has under the hood as I saw virtually no hiccups amidst the smooth animations and screen transitions. Only during continuous downloads and heavy multi-tasking the phone’s back became noticeably warmer, but even then Galaxy Nexus managed to demonstrate an admirable stability throughout the stress-tests.

Android 4.0 or ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) obviously inherits a number of design elements first seen on Android 3.0 Honeycomb running tablets. In short, ICS introduces some interesting changes that are aimed towards improving the full touch user interface, and simply make Android more fun to use. It remains to be seen, however, how ICS will handle and look on devices with smaller and lower res-screens, but on Galaxy Nexus spacious screen the OS feels very much at home.

The main underlying structure of the OS remains unchanged – you have the customizable homescreen (consisting of 5 in total screens), the app menu and the ever-present and useful status bar.

The new multitasking view – now handled by a separate command key – is a particularly nice addition to Android as it makes the process of switching between recently opened apps much more accessible. By swiping sideways you can remove an app from the list, but it’s not entirely clear whether the background process is also killed or left running. So this is more of a cosmetic overhaul – as previously in Android, the listed apps may already been closed by system’s memory manager and not actually be running.

There are also a few lessons that Google probably took from iOS. To begin with, app shortcuts in the homescreen can now be dragged on top of each other to quickly organize them into folders. The dockbar is also quite similar to iOS, and you can effortlessly replace shortcuts there to your liking, except for the menu icon in the middle.

Another major change is how you access and browse widgets. All widgets are now listed in a separate section after the app menu. While it’s indeed a handy way of exploring widgets in that fashion, scrolling through a dozen of screens to find the right widget gets cumbersome very fast.

There are also persistent moments when the new ICS is obviously conflicting with the older generation Android. The context sensitive menu key now looks more like a neglected distant relative on the new OS, sometimes being tucked in the far right corner at the bottom of the screen, sometimes, like in the case of web browser or the gallery app, relocating to the top of the screen and creating a fair bit of confusion in the process.

Overall, it’s clear Google aimed to make Android more appealing to casual smartphone users. Even though you can catch a few glimpses through the seams of the redesigned UI, it nevertheless feels like a step in the right direction.

Interestingly enough, there’s no native file manager in stock Android 4.0, but, as always, the situation can be quickly remedied with a rich selection of 3rd party apps. Speaking about apps, there’s one particular kind of app that really shows off the spacious HD screen on Galaxy Nexus – a video player. The Android Market’s favourite – MoboPlayer – didn’t support ICS at the time of writing, so instead I decided to give MX Video Player a shot. I can confirm that .mkv files (tested with a 4.37 GB movie) ran smoothly enough, although hardware acceleration still wasn’t working.

The built-in web browser has also been updated. It renders websites at a great pace, supports tabbed browsing, and, thanks to the extra pixels on the display, looks extremely impressive on Galaxy Nexus. For some reason, the ‘request desktop site’ option didn’t always work for me.

A great way to earn some extra points in my OS reviews is to natively support screenshots, and, fortunately, Android 4.0 does not disappoint here. For that, you have to press and hold the power and the volume down button at the same time for a couple of seconds. A notification message pops up after each successful attempt – and here’s a plus point well deserved, Android.

Galaxy Nexus camera. A decent 5′er but not much else

The Galaxy Nexus won’t be taking the crown as the best Android camera phone, and it quickly becomes clear that was never the aim. That’s not to say the built-in camera is bad – rather, that it could’ve been so much more. With just 5Mpix, the camera disappointingly remains on about the same league as the predecessor, the Nexus S.

The camera interface has been slightly retouched in the new Android. It’s entirely usable, but as before, won’t be taking any awards for it. The usual options to change the white balance, exposure and photo scenes are there to choose from, but anything beyond that is a no-go. On the positive note, there’s panorama shooting mode, and in camcorder mode the Galaxy Nexus can record videos with up to 1080p resolution.

The first revelation after using Galaxy Nexus camera is that its capture speed is on par – if not better – than the competition. Secondly, the 5 Mpix ( 2592 x 1944 pixels) photos have a surprising amount of detail in them. Even though with flash the photos tend to lose some colours, the outdoor shots in particular look simply great.

The bottom line – you won’t be disappointed with the camera on Galaxy Nexus, unless, of course, you come in to expect the same level of performance as anywhere else on this high-end smartphone.

Conclusions

An uncompromised, stock Android 4.0 experience alone might be enough to elevate the heart rate of many Android fans and easily justify the purchase. While the latest Google phone is clearly a great package for the Android geeks out there, the choice is less clear for others, especially current Samsung Galaxy SII users. You’ll have to be ready to give up a slightly better 8 Mpix camera and more compact dimensions in turn to receive an outstanding high-res display and the latest stock version of Android on Galaxy Nexus. The underlying performance specs are mostly identical. That’s not to say the mentioned points aren’t enough to warrant an upgrade, but that might depend heavily on the individual users priorities and needs.

Also worth keeping in mind is the non-expandable storage memory, as I’m sure quite a few multi-media users will find 16GB to be quite limiting. Perhaps for some it might be a worthwhile effort to sit tight until a larger, 32 GB model of Galaxy Nexus becomes available. But time isn’t much in favour of Galaxy Nexus. Already looming is the release of the next juggernaut – Samsung Galaxy SIII – most likely around the time of MWC in February. Taking that and the elevated price (especially compared to SGS2) out of context, and Galaxy Nexus becomes an all around solid Android power-house that I doubt many would regret buying.
I have to admit that Google Nexus with ICS at the forefront managed to grow on me fast. I can certainly spot its unique share of beauty. Unlike the competing smartphone platforms, Android can be as complicated as you want it to be. Although the learning curve remains noticeably high even with this next step in Android evolution, exploring new areas and expanding possibilities is more fun than it was ever before.

Verizon’s version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is available on Amazon for $189.99!

• Google now lets you register for Sprint’s Samsung Galaxy Nexus
• Check out this two minute video of Android Ice Cream Sandwich
• Samsung i5510 Galaxy 551 official details emerge
• Verizon exclusive Samsung Galaxy Nexus gets its full specs leaked ahead of October 11 unveiling
• Google Nexus One won’t get Ice Cream Sandwich update

The latest Verizon Galaxy Nexus video shows the handset with an official extended battery which, surprisingly, doesn’t make it much thicker than when it is without it. The enhanced battery is a 2100 mAh one (while the original is a 1850 mAh one).

The video’s embedded just below these two images:

When Verizon finally decides to launch the Galaxy Nexus, it will sell it for $299 on contract. The extended battery is probably going to cost an extra $50.

Update: Costco is reportedly preparing to sell Verizon’s Galaxy Nexus starting December 15 for $289 on contract.

In Canada, Bell and Virgin Mobile have already launched the Galaxy Nexus (prices start at $159 with a new 3-yr contract agreement).

Via Droid-life

• Samsung Galaxy Nexus extended battery discounted to $25 at Verizon
• Verizon stores start receiving Samsung Galaxy Nexus accessories
• Verizon Galaxy Nexus now rumored to arrive on December 15
• Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus “on track to launch this year”, simulator now available
• Leaked Verizon ad suggests the Samsung Galaxy Nexus could cost $199

The scheme requires you to pay £55 per month (or £65 per month for a 32 GB device) for those 12 months. For that amount of dough, alongside the smartphone, you’ll also get 750 minutes, unlimited texts, and 500 MB of data each month. The smartphone will also be insured, and that is included in the aforementioned cost. Needless to say, you won’t be paying anything upfront.

O2 Lease (which is the intuitive name the operator has chosen for this programme) will first be available in stores and via telesales. O2 Lease can be taken advantage of by new or existing O2 customers. Small businesses can also benefit from O2 Lease, on a range of business tariffs.

This is an interesting idea, although with smartphones usually being offered for free upfront with 18-month or 24-month contracts in the UK, basically the main appeal here is the lower length of the commitment, alongside the integrated insurance. If this becomes a success (even remotely), then expect all the other major UK operators to offer something similar very soon.

Via Android UK News etc.

• O2 UK intros cheaper 24 month iPhone 3G tariffs
• O2 to offer free iPhone 3G in UK
• HTC Sensation XE now available at Three UK, free from £30 per month
• Vodafone UK now has the HTC Desire Z and Nokia C7
• Nokia 700 now available at Vodafone UK, free from £26 per month

So how did HP choose to end this little mobile OS that (once) could? Simple. HP Symbianed webOS. Yes, webOS will be contributed to the open source community. That worked so well for Nokia and Symbian, surely it can only have a great ending for webOS as well.

The funny thing is that HP says it plans to be active in further development of the OS. Yet it’s going to be so for no apparent financial gain, since it doesn’t plan on releasing any new webOS devices in the foreseeable future. At least not in 2012. Meg Whitman, HP’s CEO, admitted that we may see some webOS-running HP tablets in 2013. But that’s not certain either. Oh, and HP is clearly not getting back into the smartphone space.

So basically the company decided that a “webOS is dead” announcement would have resulted in loads of negative coverage in the media and blogosphere, so opted for the next best thing: killing it without actually saying so.

Now we can all rejoice at the thought of the advancement of webOS through open source. Just like with Symbian.

Some people are even claiming that this is a sure path for webOS to become ‘the third platform’, alongside iOS and Android. Really?! And Microsoft will just sit idly and let this happen, no? No.

Anyway, ENYO, the webOS application framework, will also be open sourced. It’s unclear if HP will also open source the UI elements in webOS (which are the main things people love about this particular mobile operating system) or not. But it probably doesn’t matter. The webOS UI may still be modern today, but its roots are getting older by the day. And by 2013 or later, which is when any presumptive new devices will appear (and certainly not sooner), it will be positively ancient. So unless the open source community, helped by the few HP engineers left to work on this, will come up with another brilliant thing… it’s game over for webOS. Which we’ll all remember as a great little project that never really got the backing (or the hardware) it deserved. Sad, but true.

Prove me wrong, HP. Prove me wrong, I dare you.

Via HP and The Verge

• Want to shape the future of Symbian? Join Symbian DevCo!
• Symbian Ltd now fully belongs to Nokia; Symbian Foundation gets closer to launch
• HP officially pulls the plug on all webOS devices
• Symbian OS is now free and completely open source
• HP kills Android Slate, relies only on WebOS for tablets?

The game will be available on the iPhone 4S, iPad 2, iPhone 4, and original iPad for the iOS platform. The game will likely run better on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 since the game was originally only meant for dual-core devices,but Rockstar optimized the game for the iPhone 4 and iPad as well. The list of compatible Android smartphones include the HTC Rezound, T-Mobile G2X, LG Optimus 2x, Motorola Atrix 4G, Motorola Droid X2, Motorola Photon 4G, and Samsung Galaxy R. The following tablets will also be compatible: Acer Iconia, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Dell Streak 7, LG Optimus Pad, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1, Sony Tablet S, Toshiba Thrive.

The game will likely do well on the iOS Appstore and the Android Marketplace due to the low price and extensive amount of gameplay. The very large GTA fan base also helps. Other game studios should follow Rockstar’s lead and put some of their older games on smartphone app stores.

Rockstar

• Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Android tablet looks like Galaxy S on steroids
• LG’s Android tablet will be called Optimus Pad
• Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and Galaxy Tab P1000 won’t get Android Ice Cream Sandwich because of hardware limitations
• Hulu Plus update for Android adds compatibility on 9 new devices
• Telus Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 LTE and LG Optimus LTE outright prices unveiled

Specs-wise, the pink Galaxy S II is still the same phone it has always been. This includes the dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 16GB of onboard memory, 1GB of RAM, the amazing 4.3-inch Super OLED screen and its 8-megapixel camera. The phone ships running Android 2.3 “Gingerbread”, though Samsung has promised to upgrade it to Android 4.0.

The marketing material from Three says that the pink Galaxy S II is exclusive to 3, but that most likely just applies to Sweden, meaning that we could see the pink Android phone rolled out in different countries, on different carriers.

via SammyHub via IntoMobile

• Pink Samsung Galaxy S II can be pre-ordered now in the UK
• Pink Samsung Galaxy S II already available in the UK, yours for £445.97 SIM-free
• Samsung Galaxy Z arrives in Sweden with 4.2-inch SC-LCD screen, Tegra 2, and 5 MP camera
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus possibly headed not just to Verizon, but also to AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile
• Samsung Galaxy S II may get another 200 MHz processor speed boost up to 1.4 GHz

Specs wise, the Curve 9380 spots a 3.2-inch screen with 480 x 360 resolution, 512 MB of internal storage, NFC support, a 800 MHz processor, GPS, Blackberry 7, and a 5 megapixel camera(with no HD recording).

We don’t have any info on availability or pricing yet since the device has yet to be confirmed by T-Mobile. We will keep you updated on the status of the Blackberry Curve 9380.

FCC

• BlackBerry Bold 9790 spotted in the wild again, close to launch?
• Samsung Stratosphere hits FCC, confirms LTE support
• AT&T’s fall WP7 lineup revealed: HTC Titan, Samsung Focus S, and Samsung Focus Flash
• HTC Amaze 4G(HTC Ruby) images leak
• HTC Radar 4G hits FCC, heading to T-Mobile

In the past, we have seen the G1 also running on Honeycomb.  The touchscreen works slowly along with all of the apps and special features that are included in ICS. Unfortunately, the usual Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Rotation do not function.

It’s pretty fascinating that the G1 can run on Android 4.0 when most thought it wouldn’t go past version 1.5. Go ahead and give it a try if you have a G1 and want to be tasting that Ice Cream Sandwich.

XDA-Developers

• Check out this two minute video of Android Ice Cream Sandwich
• Android Ice Cream Sandwich photos leaked
• HTC Desire gets a minor software update – not Gingerbread
• Android Ice Cream Sandwich will be launched in October or November, says Eric Schmidt
• Android Jelly Bean to come after Ice Cream Sandwich?

Yesterday Amazon USA started taking pre-orders for the tablet, but it didn’t give us a shipping date, so naturally we were left wondering. Well, not anymore. Today we have not one, but two different release dates for the Transformer Prime in the US. In the end, there will (obviously) be only one, but we’re unable to tell at the moment which, so we’ll give you both.

First up, GameStop has also started taking pre-orders for the Asus tablet, and it conveniently also lists an actual launch date for the device: November 28. The phrase “release date” makes this sound pretty official, yet it’s strange that Asus said the Prime will be shipping in December. Perhaps it got some initial stock in early. That would be good news for would-be Transformer Prime owners, of course.

Unlike that, our second release date comes later, so will probably not be taken as well. An Amazon customer engaged in a live chat with a representative from the retailer and found out that the Transformer Prime is scheduled for release on December 16. Again the official-sounding wording.

It’s good to note that GameStop’s listing seems more likely to us. First up, because the Amazon rep may have been wrong or working with old info. That last bit can also be true because up until a few hours ago, GameStop listed December 9 as the release date for the Prime. So something may have happened very recently to push the launch all the way to this month. At least we’re hoping that’s the case.

Up in Canada, things are looking a lot simpler. No conflicting dates or anything like that over there. After Staples recently listed the Transformer Prime as ‘coming soon’, now both Best Buy and Future Shop have started taking pre-orders for the tablet. The price being asked for the 32 GB version of the Prime is $499.99, and the keyboard dock goes for $149.99.

Both retailers seem to think that the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime will be out in Canada on December 5, which is what they’ve listed as the release date. That comes to confirm the November US launch even more, in a way – after all, when’s the last time that a high-end gadget was available in Canada before the US (leaving aside carrier-branded devices)? Yeah, we can’t remember either.

Via Droid Life, Phone Arena, and MobileSyrup

• Asus Transformer Prime to be launched on December 8 in the US?
• Asus Transformer Prime to be available in the US on or later than December 19 after all
• Asus Transformer Prime arrives in Poland on December 21
• Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime pre-orders start in the UK, may ship in January
• Asus Transformer Prime to ship December for $499, full specs revealed

But what does it mean, really? For sales to be disappointing we first have to set some realistic expectations of what they should have been. And then see whether Nokia exceeded, met or missed them.

So how many Lumia 800s and Lumia 710s can we  expect Nokia to ship in Q4 2011?

Lets take a closer look at where and how Nokia is selling Lumia 800 right now. To create the table below I went through online stores of all operators in the initial Nokia Lumia 800 launch countries, and compared the prices at which it is sold there, to the prices of the competing flagships – Samsung Galaxy S2 and iPhone 4/4S.

(All prices are in Euro. They show monthly costs of the cheapest 2yr plans, at which Lumia 800, Galaxy S2 and iPhone is offered for free. For comparison purposes, when free option was not available, the initial subsidized price was split over 24 month period and added to the monthly plan cost.)

Some interesting highlights from the exercise:

• U.K. is by far the toughest and most competitive market for Lumia 800. And Samsung is really gunning for Nokia there by dropping the price of it’s Galaxy S2 flagship 14% – to £31- compared to Nokia’s £36 (42/36EUR) on Vodafone and and Orange U.K. If you had any doubts that this low Galaxy S2 price is aimed squarely at Nokia, check the prices on T-Mobile and O2 U.K. On those networks Lumia 800 is not available and there is no need for any price war on Samsung’s part. So the cheapest plan you can get free Galaxy S2 on T-mobile starts at £35.75, and at £39 on O2 UK.
• While iPhone 4S is a truly premium device and probably not in direct competition with Lumia 800, both in U.K. and Germany Nokia phone competes directly with iPhone 4 8GB on price. Price differences between Lumia and iPhone 4 in France are pretty minor too, and makes both those handsets direct competitors.
• It seems that Nokia Lumia 800 did not start shipping in Spain yet. It is not available in operator online stores, and only Orange Spain has Lumia on pre-order
• For TIM Italy there’s only unsubsidized device prices, since its site made their plans and/or subsidy schemes impossible to figure out. But the unsubsidized price might be a good indicator of the competitiveness of Nokia device, when it launches in less operator dominant markets like India, Russia, Hong-Kong and Singapore. Nokia Lumia 800 is 100 EUR cheaper than Galaxy S2, 150 EUR cheaper than iPhone 4S and 50 EUR cheaper than iPhone 4.
• I am not sure what Nokia meant when they said they have 31 operators in 6 launch countries on board for Lumia. Maybe they had MVNO’s in mind. For now Nokia Lumia 800 is available only on 14 operators in 5 European countries. And even if they get all Spanish carriers on board – that will bring operator count to 18. But overall, Nokia Lumia network coverage is pretty decent. It is available to 52% of mobile subscribers in U.K, 69% in Germany, 72% in Netherlands, and it’s on all networks in Italy and France.

So what can we learn about possible new Nokia Windows Phone sales in Q4 2010 from above?

First we will need some some starting point to see what kind of sales numbers Nokia is able to deliver for its major device launches. And they have conveniently provided us with just such a number, with Symbian^3 launch  in Q4 2010.

Back then Nokia had 2 S^3 handsets – N8 and C7 – shipping the whole quarter,  and added limited numbers of the third- C6.01 –  in the middle of November. It was a global device launch, with N8 and C7 becoming available in most Nokia markets sometime during the same quarter. The results? Nokia was able to ship 5 million S^3 smartphones in three months. There were some unconfirmed reports that 4 million of them were Nokia N8.

Let’s compare that with Lumia launch. While Nokia is not making it’s first Windows Phones available globally, the countries where they do ship, usually make up about 50% of Nokia smartphone sales. With half of the market area covered, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect 2.5 million Lumia devices to ship in Q4?

No.

Last year Nokia had about 1 million in N8 pre-orders before the first handset shipped. Also they had 12 weeks of sales, compared with only half of that or less this year. What’s worse, at least half of the current Windows Phone target market won’t get their Lumias until sometime in December. And even in Europe, Lumia is not yet shipping in Spain.

Given these limitations I will be hugely surprised if Nokia will be able to ship anything close to 2 million Windows Phones this year. And numbers between 1 and 1.5 million Lumias shipped – will be an extremely good result for them. Much more realistic expectation, and and OK result for Nokia, will be between 750K and 1 million NWPs . And, given the promotion and marketing budgets they are throwing at this thing, if they can’t make it to 750K new smartphones by the end of the year, that will be a failure and a disappointment to me.

What about you. How many Lumia’s do you expect Nokia to ship?

• Compal to start delivery of Windows Phones to Nokia in September. 2 million units ordered for Q4 2011
• Nokia Lumia 710 may be out in the UK on January 6
• Nokia Lumia 710 – some thoughts and hands-on
• Apple orders 56 million iPhones for H2 2011. 26 million of them- iPhone 5s
• T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 710 drops to $39.99

As such, it’s quite understandable that people are anxious to get their hands on this device. And starting today, that just became easier since the Transformer Prime is now up for pre-order at Amazon in the USA. Two versions are available, one with 32 GB of built-in storage, and another with double that internal space. The prices are, just as expected, $499.99 and $599.99, respectively. Oddly there’s no 16 GB option listed, so conceivably if that ever arrives, it may be even cheaper.

So if you want to be among the first people in the US to get your hands on a brand new Transformer Prime tablet, head over to Amazon now to pre-order yours.

That’s not all the Transformer Prime news for today though. Asus has finally published an official page for the new tablet at its website. As you’d expect, the page goes through the device’s main selling points, and also neatly presents you with the full list of its tech specs. Overall pretty informative, we have to say.

Last, but definitely not least in Transformer Prime news for the day, Nvidia decided it just couldn’t wait any longer and showcased a little bit of Ice Cream Sandwich running on the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. That’s right, the newest version of Android is seen doing its thing on Asus’ newest tablet.

Of course, the manufacturer has already confirmed that the Prime will be updated to ICS, but it’s nice to get a taste of what it will look like. After all, this is amazingly the first time we’ve ever seen ICS running on a tablet, even if the new version of the OS was unveiled by Google a few weeks ago.

Seems pretty smooth to us. Now for prospective Transformer Prime owners there’s some waiting still left to do until the tablet hits the streets, and then unfortunately some more waiting for the ICS update to arrive. Still, that shouldn’t take too long, especially considering Asus’ excellent track record with regard to Honeycomb updates for its original Transformer tablet (which has been faster than that provided by most, if not all other Android tablet makers).

• Asus Transformer Prime delayed until late January in Italy, will have Android ICS at launch
• UK: Asus Eee Pad Transformer can be yours for just £299 until December 4
• UK: Asus Transformer Prime TF700T not arriving before June, original Prime getting extended warranty
• Asus Transformer Prime may be delayed until December, could launch with Android Ice Cream Sandwich
• Asus says there’s no 3G Transformer Prime

Unfortunately for those looking for the 32GB or 64GB iPhones for Sprint, it doesn’t appear as if Radio Shack will be carrying them, judging by the absence of them from the Radio Shack memo. The pricing will be the standard $199.99, not unexpected considering Apple has a pretty firm grasp on pricing. Per the memo, Radio Shack encourages their local salespeople to talk up Sprint’s unlimited plan, currently the only way to get unlimited data on the iPhone in the United States (unless you are grandfathered into an unlimited plan). Previously, Radio Shack had only offered the iPhone 4 8GB for Sprint in their stores, as well as the iPhone 4S for the other two carriers.

To briefly recap the specs of the iPhone 4S, it’s got the Apple A5 processor, 512MB of RAM, the 3.5-inch LCD screen, that great 8MP 1080p camera as well as all the iOS software, including Siri, the new person digital assistant that’s captured the imagination of everybody.

The iPhone 4S has already been added to Radio Shack’s website (though you can’t order it there), and so you’ll probably be able to find it in your local store if it normally carries cell phones.

• AT&T LG Thrill 4G gets delayed again, will be available on September 4
• Sprint will offer unlimited data for the iPhone
• Sprint may offer the iPhone 5 with unlimited data plans, unlike Verizon and AT&T
• Sprint admits losing customers to AT&T’s iPhone. Hopes EVO 4G will fix that
• T-Mobile’s Full Monty is the UK’s first true ‘unlimited everything’ plan, available from February 1

Anyway, the update is first out for Atrix devices bought from Vodafone Germany as well as those purchased unlocked in Northern Europe. Other countries should expect to see the update arrive next week. That said, the update is probably going to take a while to reach all of Europe’s Atrixes. But at least it’s finally on its way.

The update brings enhanced security, improved power management, alongside all the tasty Gingerbread bits. If you’re impatient and want to manually check if it’s available for your handset, go to Settings > About Phone > System Update. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Otherwise, there’s still a bit of waiting to do. But by now you’re probably used to that.

Via Eurodroid

• AT&T Motorola Atrix 4G will get Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread in July
• Bell Motorola Atrix Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread update now available
• Motorola Atrix 4G receives Gingerbread update
• AT&T Motorola Atrix 2 gets a software update, many bug fixes and performance enhancements
• Motorola Milestone 2 Android 2.3 Gingerbread update will start rolling out in Europe tomorrow

The Casio G’zOne Ravine 2 also comes with global roaming, meaning you can use it almost anywhere in the world. It has a 3.2 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and video recording, two displays, GPS, Bluetooth, and microSD card support. Opera Mini comes preinstalled, as do VZ Navigator and G’zGear software, which gives you a compass, walking counter, astro calendar, thermometer, tide information, sunrise and sunset, and finally lets you star gaze.

The Casio G’zOne Ravine 2 will become available online on November 17 for $149.99 (after a $50 mail-in rebate) with a new two-year contract. You’ll find it in stores starting on November 23.

Via Phone Scoop

• Verizon announces the rugged Casio G’zOne Rock
• Verizon announces the Casio G’zOne Ravine rugged clamshell
• Verizon’s Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 now officially available
• Verizon brings Opera Mini to its feature phones
• Rugged, Android-powered Casio G’zOne Commando unveiled by Verizon, launches on April 28 for $199.99

The Iconia Tab A501 is basically identical to the A500 save for the fact that it comes with mobile data connectivity (which means either 3G or 4G depending on your carrier’s branding preference). The Iconia Tab A501 is now available to order with three-year Rogers contracts for $199.99. You can get one at WirelessWave, Tbooth Wireless and Wireless Etc.

The Acer Iconia Tab A501 has a dual-core 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 32 GB of built-in storage space, a 5 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 2 MP front-facing camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and HSPA+ support. It runs Android Honeycomb.

Via MobileSyrup

• Acer Iconia Tab 100 launched in Canada
• Acer Iconia now available at Best Buy for $450
• Acer Iconia Tab A501 with 3G now available in the UK for £534
• Acer Iconia Tab A500 to cost just $400 and come with $50 gift card at Target starting on July 17
• Acer launches 16 GB Iconia Tab A500 in the UK for £349.99

If you are passionate about mobile tech, good at finding interesting news, have strong, well argued opinions and know how to write well, we are looking for news editors in U.S., Europe and Asia.

To apply, write and submit 2 news posts that you think will be a good fit to be published on UV, on important/interesting news bits on the day of submission. The pics are not necessary – we are interested in your writing skills.

Submit your application to jobs at unwiredview dot com.

Due to the large number of e-mails we receive, we will not be able to respond to every application. We will be collecting applications for a few days, and will get in touch if we are interested, next week.

PS. Please make sure the sample news posts for UV, on hot/relevant topics of the day, are part of your application e-mail. Applications containing only links to your previous work will not be considered

• Want to write for us? Unwired View is hiring!
• Is Apple warming up to iPhone stylus idea?
• Orange to launch Application Shop – its own app store
• RIM’s own App Store: BlackBerry Application Storefront, ready in March 2009
• Samsung Bada Developers Challenge kicks off, $2.7 million in prizes

Nokia is working on the successor/ replacement for their N8 cameraphone. The new Nokia imaging flagship will have a bigger camera sensor (not sure about resolution), optical zoom, 3.5” WVGA Clear Black display with Gorilla Glass, 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM. And it will still run on Symbian.

N8 successor is scheduled for Q2 2012 release, and may be launched at Mobile World Congress in February. But we are still not sure about MWC announcement plans, since a major Symbian phone upgrade might detract from a huge Nokia Windows Phone marketing push they have planned in Barcelona.

Given Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone, and announced Symbian phase out plans, it was pretty strange that their new imaging flagship will use the old OS.

But the fact of the matter is- Windows Phone Tango (WP iteration that will be shipping next spring) is not able to handle all the Nokia camera wizardry yet. The earliest that they might be able to port most of Nokia’s imaging assets to Windows Phone, will be Apollo/WP8, which is now scheduled for Q3 2012 release. If then.

And after more then 18 months on the market, 24 months after it was announced – next spring Nokia N8 will be an obsolete device which Nokia will be phasing out of the market. The new improved camera flagship on Symbian should replace the aging N8 for those, who really care about quality camera in their phone. Especially if it will be priced at around 350EUR, as the current specs suggest.

One question that remains – is which version of Symbian will the next Nokia camera flagship  run. Current Symbian versions (Anna/Belle) only support the nHD screen resolution, and new phone’s display should have higher res then that. Will it be a full fledged Symbian update like Belle, or just a minor revision that ads the support for better displays?

• Nokia 603 leaked. Symbian Belle update to start on October 26?
• Microsoft Apps for Symbian Belle smartphones coming soon
• Nokia’s first Windows Phones: W7, W8, E6 successor, and more
• Skype app for Nokia Belle (Symbian) available for download
• Nokia gives up on Symbian (the brand), promises Belle update for February

But the good news is that it’s finally here. More than a month after finally going on sale in the US, the Eee Pad Slider is now available to order from Dixons. The retailer also mentions that it has Eee Pad Slider tablets in stock and ready to be dispatched to you.

The price being asked is £429.99. For that amount of dough, you’ll get a Slider with 16 GB of built-in storage, a 1 GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, a 10.1-inch touchscreen, (obviously) a sliding full QWERTY keyboard, a 5 MP rear camera, a secondary front-facing camera for video calls, a USB port, microSD card slot, a mini HDMI port, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi connectivity. The Eee Pad Slider runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb, and not Windows 7. Clearly, retailers know the difference.

To get your Slider now, head over to Dixons and place an order.

• Asus Eee Pad Slider now available in the US starting at $479
• Dell smartphone roadmap leaks, powerful new Android and WP7 handsets on the way
• Verizon Motorola Droid 4 official spec sheet breaks cover
• 7-inch Acer Iconia Tab A100 now available in the UK for £259
• Asus Eee Pad Transformer now available in the UK for £379.99

Nokia really went out of its way to bring the price of this Windows Phone down. At EUR 270 before taxes and subsidies – Lumia 710 beats most of its Windows Phone competition and is spec’d to go heads-on with mid range Android handsets. Especially in unsubsidized markets where carriers have little control over device sales. Which is where Nokia Lumia 710 is launching first – Russia, India, Hong Kong and Singapore.

While it lacks the refined looks of Nokia 800, Lumia 710 is 150 Euro cheaper and has almost the same specs. Save for the camera ( 5 megapixels instead of 8), and the type of 3.7” display (ordinary Nokia Clear Black TFT instead of Super Amoled), it sports the same 1.4GHz Snapdragon CPU, GPU and 512MB of RAM. Nokia Lumia 710 runs on Windows Phone and comes with the same Nokia Music, Drive and Sports apps we demoed in our Lumia 800 hands-on.

Now combine these pretty good features, specs, low price of Lumia 710 with the Halo effect from the huge Nokia 800 marketing campaign, and what do you get? Potentially a huge hit IMHO

Here’s a short hands-on video of Nokia Lumia 710:

• Nokia Lumia 800 hands-on. Launch musings, Nokia Drive & Nokia Music apps demo
• Nokia Lumia 800 to be launched on November 16 in the UK
• T-Mobile’s Nokia Lumia 710 can be pre-ordered for $0 at Wirefly
• Nokia Lumia 900 to come in white, too
• Black Nokia Lumia 800 available for pre-order at Vodafone UK

It is the same Nokia N9, with Meego  OS replaced by Windows Phone Mango. And this is a bit of a problem for Nokia now. We already had  3 months to admire that uni-body design with curved glass. And we have been seeing Windows Phone Mango demos even longer.  For us, writing about this stuff every day, it is a  bit hard to get excited about and “old” phone with an “old” OS, even if they now make a completely new product.

Media fatigue aside, Nokia Lumia 800 is indeed the best Windows Phone I had a chance to play with. And I played with quite a few of them. The hardware of Lumia 800 is fast, solid and well designed. It really stands out among WIndows Phone competition

But Nokia didn’t have enough time to make its own imprint on the software inside Lumia 800. It is still mainly the same Windows Phone Mango. Lumia even uses the same Bing Maps for mapping and pedestrian navigation for now. The only apps to differentiate Nokia 800 from the rest of Windows Phone pack are Nokia Music and Nokia Drive applications. Also Nokia Sports, but that seems to be only a Nokia branded ESPN Sports Windows Phone app.

Nokia Music app brings the same music services and library we were used to on our Symbian devices to Windows Phone. It’s a huge library customized for each country the service is available. You can download and buy any mp3 track you want and get billed through the operator. Nokia Music also comes with MixRadio feature – a preselected music track collections of various genres, that you can stream,  or download and play for free.

Nokia Drive – is a drive navigation app based on Nokia Maps&Navigation services. Unfortunately, it is just a drive navigation appplication, wich is pretty inconvenient for pedestrian use, or as a stand alone maps app. But Nokia rep assured me that this is just a start. Full Nokia Maps and on foot navigation apps are coming in the nearest future.

Overall – Nokia Lumia 800 is a really cool Windows Phone and a good start of a new Nokia strategy. If not for the launch of N9 in  June, it could have been a great start.

However, apart from a small minority here, very few people even heard about Nokia N9. So a combination of a still rather strong Nokia brand, distribution muscle,  operator support and a marketing budget which is 3x bigger then Nokia ever had for a single product launch, are almost guarantied to make  Nokia Lumia 800 into a big hit.

Here’s a short video demo of Nokia Lumia 800, Nokia Music and Nokia Drive apps:

• Nokia Lumia 710 – some thoughts and hands-on
• Nokia unveils the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710, its first Windows Phones
• Nokia Lumia 800 to be launched on November 16 in the UK
• Nokia Drive For Non-Nokia Windows Phone 7 Devices Now Possible As XAP Leaks
• Nokia Lumia 710 will bring More Windows Phone Mango to Orange UK

In the first part I talked about how the top managers saw the company situation in  September 2009, during its annual Nokia World conference, when they proudly announced a fresh offensive in the smartphone market. And how that offensive fizzled out in the next 6 months.

Today I take a closer look at what happened during the next year and what forced Nokia to abandon the strategy it has been pursuing before, drop its own smart device platforms, and switch to the unproven Windows Phone OS in February 2011.

If you are interested in the longer term view, check out my posts “How Nokia was disrupted“.

February – September 2010. When Symbian/Meego/Qt became not good enough

During Q1 2010 earnings report in April, Nokia managers were forced to admit that they were not able to execute on the strategy outlined in September and December of 2009, and that they are delaying the release of the next generation Symbian OS and new devices,  by months. Few weeks later, Nokia issued a profit warning and lowered profit expectations for the rest of the year.

By that time OPK’s fate as Nokia CEO was, most likely, already decided. Nokia’s board saw the precarious situation 4 years of OPK’s leadership brought the company to, and understood that a major change of direction is necessary.

In May 2010 Nokia announced another of its restructurings, and brought Anssi Vanjoki back to the spotlight from the exile in Nokia’s marketing arm, where he was banished after losing a fight for CEO spot back in 2006. Nokia’s Board put Anssi in charge of the most important smartphone division, with a task of reforming Nokia ways and possible promise of the top position. The new CEO search started at about the same time, with Anssi Vanjoki as an obvious front runner. He had to come up with a viable plan for Nokia’s turnaround, sell it to the board, and convince them that he can execute it.

As soon as Anssi started in his new job in July, he issued a very inspiring rallying cry “The fightback starts now”. And got to work on changing things. From what we know now – those changes included:

• dropping incompatible Symbian^4 development in favor of a more evolutionary path we see today
• strongly refocusing all Nokia smart device efforts around Qt
• killing off competing UI projects
• restarting Meego development with the new Qt based Swipe UI

(Most of those changes were announced/came out when Stephen Elop was already in charge, but that was too soon for a man only 3 weeks into the new job, for it to have been purely his decision. After all – Elop himself said that he would spend his first month (October) listening, learning things from Nokia employees.)

Despite the big internal changes, Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia man to its core, was adamant that he will be able to turn Nokia around relying solely on Symbian/Meego/Qt trifecta. And refused to even consider external platform alternatives. Unfortunately, he failed to convince Nokia board to trust him on this.

We’ll never know whether Anssi was right or wrong, or how Nokia boardroom politics played out, but we know the end result of it. Few weeks into the Anssi’s new job as head of smartphone division, Nokia Board made a decision that his plan is not enough.

According to Board’s thinking, Nokia may not be able to survive on its own, the viability of Symbian and current Nokia transition strategy would have to be evaluated afresh, and possibilities of joining other mobile platforms – either Android or Windows Phone – seriously looked into. And Anssi was not the man to do it – they started looking for an external CEO with strong software background  to implement the changes.

And they found one in Stephen Elop in early September 2010.

September 2010 – February 2011. The end of Nokia as we know it and a fresh start

Nokia has announced that it has hired Stephen Elop as new CEO on Sept. 10th. His vision and Nokia turn-around plan so obviously rejected, Anssi Vanjoki announced his resignation from Nokia 3 days later. On Sept. 21st Elop started his new job.

The end of Q3 2010 was a very turbulent time at Nokia. The changes Anssi Vanjoki initiated in the smartphone division were starting to take shape. Meego team began working on the new Swipe interface, Nokia N8 – the first Symbian^3 device was about to ship and the plans to streamline Symbian development were in place. On the other hand, market realities were catching up and Nokia’s smartphone market share started dropping too fast – it declined 6% in just one quarter.

The end of the year was even worse. Symbian^1 sales have collapsed. In Q4 2010, during the Holiday Shopping Season, Nokia sold 3.2 million less of its Symbian^1 handsets, then it was able to sell just 3 months ago. Due to previous delays and pent up demand, Nokia’s formidable sales organization was able to push 5 million next generation Symbian^3 devices to operators and wholesale partners. S^3 helped to show a some quarterly growth, and even increased average device price and overall Nokia profitability, but those gains were largely an illusion. Compared to available Android 2.2 devices, the new Symbian phones were uncompetitive and the end consumer demand was pretty low. Failing to sell the devices they already had, Nokia partners started slashing the orders for the next year. For more detailed analysis of Nokia Q4 2010 check here.

The fate of Symbian has already been decided during spring/summer 2010. Looking at an amount of time, efforts and resources S^3 update required, Nokia’s management and the board have already made up their minds about the gradual phase out, in favor of Meego. But the rapid collapse of S^1 sales and a tepid Symbian^3 uptake must have caught them by surprise.

Since mid November 2010 Stephen Elop and Nokia management team were already talking to Google and Microsoft about adding their mobile OSes to Nokia’s offerings. But as 2011 rolled in and Nokia saw the actual sales numbers and projections, the situation became much more urgent.

At  the time, Nokia was less then 4 months into the development of the new Swipe interface for Meego, and no guaranties that they will be able to ship it by next September. Furthermore, according to Business Week, in early January 2011 management realized that at the current pace  they will only be able to launch 3 Meego devices before 2014. This one device a year release cycle for Meego phones was the part of the original Nokia strategy/roadmap. And Meego team was following this roadmap even after the changes initiated by Anssi Vanjoki during the summer of 2010.

And it might have been a good plan – to have one top of the line champion device a year, to put all of Nokia’s marketing strength behind. If Nokia had a refreshed and moderately competitive Symbian OS, to fill the portfolio beneath it. Alas, with Symbian sales collapsing, instead of orderly transition to Meego via Qt, Nokia was now facing a rapid collapse of its main smartphone platform with nothing to replace it for the next 10-20 months.

To make matters worse, they now had a hard deadline when the new Nokia strategy had to be unveiled to the world. The date for this – Nokia Capital Market days on February 11th, was already set and announced.

Coming to the realization that the platform you have been betting your future survival on is not ready to compete, and may not be ready for years, must have been a pretty big shock to Nokia team. In late 2010, Android or Windows Phone was just an attractive option to broaden Nokia product portfolio, help with U.S. market and smoothen the transition. So after first introductory meetings between CEOs, high level management teams were mostly looking into technological feasibility and negotiating technical details during the meetings in New York and Reykjavik. But in January of 2011 this suddenly became a huge “bet the whole future of the company” decision for Nokia.

Google, riding high on Android success, wasn’t much interested in giving Nokia much leeway, or possibilities to customize the OS to Nokia’s liking. To them Nokia was just another handset maker which will have to adhere to Android Compatibility Guidelines like the rest. And the way Google treated Samsung- stopping already shipping Galaxy S sales over the Skyhook matter last summer, shows what would have happened to Nokia, if it fully committed to Android.

That left only Microsoft’s Windows Phone as a viable platform for Nokia. Using possible Android switch as a club, Elop was able to get the permission to modify Windows Phone OS to Nokia needs, got the commitment of huge marketing support payments from Redmond, made Navteq/Nokia maps the default in Microsoft ecosystem, and negotiated revenue share from the location based services built on Navteq technology. The deal was hammered out during Ballmer’s visit to Helsinki and Jan. 16th Microsoft/Nokia management meeting in London, and finalized on February 10th by the approval of Nokia’s Board. The rest, as they say, is history.

Will Nokia’s bet on Windows Phone be able to turn the company around? We  simply do not know yet. We’ll see the first tangible results tomorrow, at Nokia World. But  will probably have to wait until next summer to see if the strategy really works.

Wouldn’t Nokia have been better off,  if it had doubled down on Meego and made it work? We will never know. But a thing to remember here – is that this decision was not made just by Trojan Horse Elop secretly under Ballmer’s command. Most of the top Nokia management, and Nokia’s Board – with a much better insights into the real state of Meego and Nokia’s business situation at the time, approved and fully supported Windows Phone switch.

Given the cards he was dealt, the Meego and Symbian situation at the time, Stephen Elop played the best game he could. Now we have to wait and see if that was enough.

Hat tip to AllAboutWindowsPhone’s Rafe for help with some of the Meego stuff in this post

• Nokia’s head of Mobile Solutions (Anssi Vanjoki) resigns
• Nokia’s road to Feb.11th – the last 18 months. Part 1
• Nokia N8 is “the best entertainment phone”, says Anssi Vanjoki
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”
• Elop says Nokia’s first Windows Phones are on track for Q4

Back then, Symbian was still the biggest smartphone OS in the world, shipping 100 million+ devices a year. And, after 3 years of treading water, the Nokia turnaround seemed to be just around a corner. The newly hired CEO appeared to be fixing the bloated and ineffective software operation, killing off competing Symbian UI renewal projects and streamlining the development process. With 5 million devices shipped, Symbian^3 OS appeared to be selling pretty well, improving company margins and profitability. After years of waiting, Qt – the new well regarded application and UI development framework for Nokia smartphones – was more or less ready and shipping, promising a smooth transition from aging Symbian to the next generation Meego OS. And everyone was expecting the first Meego phone announcement any day now.

After thousands of man years and billions of Euros invested into developing its own platforms, the thought that Nokia will simply abandon Meego and Symbian at a time when those investments were starting to turn the company around, was simply inconceivable. And yet, it is exactly what happened on February 11th.

Stephen Elop got on stage with Steve Ballmer in tow, and announced to the world that Nokia is abandoning all its smartphone platform initiatives, betting its future on the new, unproven and as yet unsuccessful Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS.

How did things get so bad at Nokia, that even its senior management lost all faith in its own abilities to turn company around?

September 2009 – February 2010. Nokia’s fizzled offensive

From the long term point of view, it’s easy to identify the point where Nokia’s downfall started. January 9th, 2007. The day iPhone was introduced and mobile industry changed. I wrote about “hows” and “whys” in my posts “How Nokia was disrupted. Part 1 and part 2”.

Here I’ll try to take a closer look at what happened during the last 18 months leading to February 11t.

In September 2009, almost 3 years after iPhone announcement, but with Android 1.x still struggling to find its customer, top Nokia managers were feeling pretty good about state of things. “We are on the offensive” – announced Anssi Vanjoki during Nokia World 2009, dismissing claims that Nokia is getting killed by new smartphone competitors.

And he had a point. At the time Nokia just launched the next generation Linux Maemo based superphone – N900, which was enthusiastically received by anyone who had a chance to play with it. While there already were a lot of problems reported with the new Nokia N97, the upcoming software update was supposed to fix them. Furthermore, the new flagship was selling at a rate of 1 million+ devices a month (huge number at the time, comparable to the iPhone sales), and there was a cheaper companion handset – N97 Mini – coming, that had to boost Nokia smartphone shipments even more. At the mid-tier, Nokia 5800 was still a hit, with 5530 and 5230 on the way to take Symbian Touch device sales to the new levels.

For 2010, a major Symbian rewrite was coming. In the first half of the year S^3 had to fix all the underlying S60 stuff that made it so hard to do touch, with Symbian^4 ushering the next generation modern touch based user interface for next Christmas. And Nokia had a killer device– Nokia N8 – in the works, scheduled to launch sometime in the second quarter of 2010. In addition to the next generation, consumer ready Maemo 6 based Nokia N9, scheduled for the holiday season.

With its smartphone market share close to 40%, and holding steady, good device line-up for the next 6 months, and a solid upgrade plan for 2010, it’s no wonder that Nokia execs felt pretty certain about the future.

And then it all fell apart. Nokia’s new offensive fizzled in less then 6 months.

While Nokia Q4 2009 results, as seen by outsiders, were pretty good, the reality was catching up to them. Nokia was able to push almost 10 million of its new touchscreen devices (N97, N97, 5800XM, etc; ) into the sales channel. But hardware mistakes in N97 design made the usability problems impossible to fix, dealing a huge blow to Nokia credibility in the eyes of the best, high end customers, and (most likely) resulting in huge product returns.

The realization of what a deep hole they are in, must have hit Nokia management and board sometime between December 2009, when they made their Capital Markets Day presentations, and February 2010.

At CMD in December Nokia execs still sounded very confident about their strategy, all but promising Symbian^3 release in the first half of 2010, and the second major Symbian milestone (presumably S^4) , in Q4 2010. And, even though Nokia has decided not to be present on Mobile World Congress show floor in February, they’ve had an even bigger place booked next door to MWC, to show off next generation Symbian devices.

Sometime in late 20009/early 2010, Nokia management figured out that their next generation Symbian^3 and their new flagship – N8 – are not even remotely ready for the spotlight, and will have to be delayed by about 6 months. Symbian^3 launch at MWC was cancelled, and in Barcelona we saw a very different, much more humble Nokia. There were no more loud ‘We are on the offensive” proclamations and the huge showroom felt like ghost town, with no S^3 devices and only few outdated S^1/S60 handsets on display. Nokia’s EVP Anssi Vanjokki even made a surprise admission to All About Symbian’s Rafe Blandford, that their Nokia N97 flagship is crap.

All these problems – N97 debacle, S^3 and N8 delay – couldn’t have come at a worse time. iPhone 3GS was already stealing troves of most profitable customers  all over the world. Then, in the first half of 2010, second generation of Android smartphones started shipping worldwide, providing another very good alternative to the bug ridden Nokia flagships.

At that point, with no champion device of its own, Nokia had to admit the defeat at the high end, and move heavily down market, pretending that this was a plan all along, under the “democratization of smartphone” slogan.

Furthermore, to keep its high smartphone unit volumes, and the appearances that it is still doing ok, Nokia had to resort to buying market share by price dumping. Which resulted in falling profitability and margins, and was still only a very temporary fix.

This is Part 1 of our look into the last 18 months of Nokia as we knew it. In the part 2 we’ll cover appointment of Anssi Vanjoki as head of Nokia smartphone division, his plan to save Nokia on the strength of Symbian/Meego/Qt stratetgy, and his failure to convince Nokia Board that it is enough, hiring of Stepehen Elop and other events that lead to Feb. 11th

• Nokia N9 will be available in Sweden on September 23
• Nokia’s road to Feb.11th – the last 18 months. Part 2
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”
• Nokia N9 and MeeGo will be supported “for years”
• Nokia Q1 2010 musings. 18% ASP decline, OVI store grows 70%, rethinking Symbian^3, S^1/S60 here to stay

We all heard about the biggest threat to Google’s mobile OS – patent issues. We took a close look at them on Tuesday, and I won’t go into that again. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich launch event in Hong Kong brought enough signs of Android troubles in addition to patent stuff.

Stalled growth, possible problems with Verizon in the U.S., worsening vendor attitude towards Google and its loss of leverage with OEMs– all signs point to a very challenging 2012 for Android.

Android growth is now stalled at 550K activations a day for 3 months, and there’s something strange about it

Something strange has happened to Android growth in the past three months. During Q2, 2011 earnings conference call on July 14th, Google announced that they are activating 550K Android devices a day. And that they now have a total of 135 million Android devices activated since launch.

On Tuesady, while announcing Android 4.0, Google revealed that 550K daily activations number remains the same.

Which is pretty strange, because just last week, during Q3 earnings conference call, Larry Page told us that there are now a total of 190 million Android devices activated since launch. It means that during the last three months Google has activated 55 million Android devices. The problem is, that at a rate of 550K activations a day – Google could have activated only 50.6 million devices during the last 92 days. It’s a simple math – and it shows us that there is a discrepancy of at least 4.4 million units between what Larry Page told us last week, and what we learned today.

The only explanation I can think of – is that there was a pretty big daily activations spike sometime between July and October. Big enough to account for additional 4 million+ new Android devices. But then it leveled off, and activations dropped again to the July levels. After uninterrupted almost 2 year growth, such fluctuations look rather worrying and raise the question of how much more growth is there for Android.

Of course, we do have a Holiday Season coming up, and new exciting Android devices are launching as we speak. But will they be enough to boost Google’s mobile OS growth to the levels we are used to?

Did Verizon f&#%k up U.S. Nexus/ICS launch plans?

Verizon has long been Google’s main carrier partner in the U.S. It was the key to jumpstarting Android growth in late 2009 with the launch of Verizon Droid, it was a the key launch partner for Android 2.2 Froyo in summer of 2010, and it was the biggest backer of Google’s OS in U.S.

The rumor drumbeat leading to the Ice Cream Sandwich launch was well in line with Verizon’s role. It became clear during the summer that Samsung is making the next Nexus device. Then, in late August, we learned that Verizon decided pass on the new hot Samsung’s flagship – Galaxy S2. Soon after that we heard the name Droid Prime or Nexus Prime bandied about, as a hot new Google Experience device on Verizon. And that Droid Prime will be exclusive to Verizon in U.S. for a few months. The reasons for forgoing Galaxy S2 in favor of Samsung made Droid Nexus Prime were obvious. Then came the invitations to a joint Google Samsung event on Oct. 11th – during CTIA trade show in San Diego.

Stars were aligning perfectly for the exclusive next generation Android flagship launch on Verizon , along the lines of the original Android 2.0 Verizon Droid event.

And then something happened. 4 days before October 11th Samsung and Google cancelled Ice Cream Sandwich launch event. Giving a line about respect for Steve Jobs as a reason.

By Oct. 11th – 6 days would have passed since Steve Jobs death. On the very next day – Oct. 12th – Apple themselves were having the biggest iOS 5 launch in history and they had no plans of postponing anything out of respect for Steve. Heck, Apple execs didn’t even postpone iPhone 4S announcement, which happened just a day before Steve passed away, and they knew about Steve’s situation perfectly well.

And here we have two Apple’s competitors cancelling a major U.S. product launch. During the biggest U.S. mobile industry event in 6 months. Just 4 days before it happened, and when the invited press corps have already made all their travel plans. Out of respect for Steve? It sounds much more like a convenient and rather cynical excuse then the real reason for the ICS launch cancellation.

I think that the real reason why Samsung and Google didn’t launch Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich at CTIA San Diego, was because something happened between them and their main carrier launch partner – Verizon. Most likely – Verizon changed their mind about the support and promotion it was going to give Nexus Prime, by deciding to make Motorola’s Droid RAZR their flagship device for 2011 Holiday Season. And without a major U.S. carrier partner – the CTIA announcement fell through.

Thus two separate major Android device launches on Oct. 18th (Droid RAZR and Galaxy Nexus). Thus Google and Samsung screwing Verizon back, taking attention away from VZWs main device launch of the year with their own Android 4 ICS announcement. Thus Google and Samsung moving their launch event to Hong Kong, to get some additional media exposure from Wall Street Journal’s AsiaD conference. Thus the outright refusal by Google execs to name Verizon as a U.S. carrier for Galaxy Nexus. And thus the multiple carrier availability and no Verizon exclusivity signs on an official Samsung U.S Galaxy Nexus info sign-up page.

Cooling of Google/Android OEM relationships. The other reason to buy Motorola?

A lot of mobile handset vendors still strongly support Google’s mobile OS, and ship Android smartphones in mind boggling volumes. But since last spring/summer, when Google delayed or even interrupted major device launches for Motorola and Samsung over its own mistake and a purely internal Skyhook matter, OEMs have become much more circumspect about Google.

This change in attitude is best seen in the Nexus program. According to Google’s execs – Nexus is supposed to be a showcase, a reference design pushing the smartphone innovation limits. But the only time they were able to do that, was with the very first Nexus One.

After that, HTC lost any interest to build other Nexus Phones, focusing on the development of its own Sense UX instead. Most other vendors do not seem to care much about Nexus either. And Samsung, who now has 2 Nexus devices in its portfolio, only provides a ho-hum oldish hardware. The first Samsung Nexus S was a bit souped up Galaxy S device, and the new Galaxy Nexus is more or less the same Galaxy S2 LTE with a better display. Samsung prefers to save the best of its hardware innovations for its own Galaxy S line.

Google has also lost the leverage it had over OEMs by providing some of them with the early access to the next version of Android code. It used to be a very big deal and huge competitive advantage.

HTC’s early access to Éclair code allowed them to beat competitors by months with first Android 2.1 super phones. And sell millions of them before others were able to catch up. But the early access to Android Froyo or Gingerbread proved to be much less beneficial. Then Honeycomb flopped. And big vendor interest in early code access evaporated. We’ll have to wait and see what Samsung will be able to do with the Ice Cream Sandwich, but current reaction from other Android manufacturers indicates that they are not too worried about it. Android 2.3 Gingerbread interface is good enough for a few months delay it’ll take to upgrade to ICS.

And Google isn’t the only game in time for smartphone vendors, like it was in 2009/2010. Back then – if you wanted to have anything remotely competitive with iPhone, the only thing you could use was Android 2.x. Today smart device vendors can chose between Windows Phone Mango, Ice Cream Sandwich and heavily customized Android 2.3 Gingerbread. What’s more, as Amazon just showed us – Android 2.x is an open source platform that can be forked with a heavily customized user experience. While smartphone vendors like HTC already have their own Android interfaces that may be more important to the end user then the OS version underneath.

What is happening now – is that Google’s early strategy to play Android vendors off each other by providing early access to Android code, and wielding pressure over OEMs by withholding new device certification, is rapidly eroding. Soon, Android OS may reach a level of maturity where any big OEM will be free to do with it as he pleases, paying little attention to what Google wants.

And that, in addition to the patent problems, might have been the other big reason for Google Motorola deal. If Google only makes good software, which somehow conflicts with some interests of Android OEMs, e.g. – if HTC decides that it does not care much for Android 5.0 and decides to develop Sense UI on Android 4.x in some other direction – there may be very little Google can do to make them see the way.

But if Google owns its own Android OEM, and can put great devices with their great software to directly compete with vendor whims – HTC, Samsung and others will have to take notice, and Android will move in the direction Google wants it to.

Google’s troubles with Android. A blip or a start of a bigger trend?

All the signs I mentioned above – stalled growth, Verizon thing, troubles with Android vendors – taken separately, do not mean much.

Last year, after a huge spring/summer spurt, Android growth also leveled off before holiday season. Verizon thing can be just my imagination, or a conscious decision by Google to form closer relationships with other U.S. carriers. Android OEMs may be just hedging their bets some, but still in love with Android. And the patent threat may get resolved somehow in the near future.

But taken as whole, they look to me like a start of a new trend. The heady days of unabated Android growth are coming to an end. There might be one more Holiday Season daily activations jump left for it, but that’s about it.

If patent infringement lawsuits do not kill or seriously cripple it, Android is certainly not going away. It is already a hugely successful mobile platform, and will continue to do do great. But sooner or later this exponential growth we so got used to had to come to an end. And that time is either upon us already, or will be here very soon.

• Google moves Nexus Prime launch to October 19. Says it activated 55 million Android devices in Q3
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus (Nexus Prime) unveiling and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich launch delayed
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus (not Droid Prime) with LTE shows up in Verizon’s system
• Oct. 27th European Samsung Galaxy Nexus launch to crash Nokia World party again?
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus heading to Verizon according to promo video?

So let’s dig in. The company posted quarterly revenue of $28.27 billion and net profit of $6.62 billion. Compared to the year-ago results of $20.34 billion and $4.31 billion respectively, that’s a 38% bump in revenue and a 53% jump in net profit.

However, compared to the previous quarter (which would be Q2 in the calendar, but Apple’s fiscal Q3), things aren’t as bright. Revenue is down by 1%, and net profit is 10% lower.

It’s basically the same story when we look at iPhone sales numbers. Solid growth compared to last year, a slowdown compared to last quarter. Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones this quarter, which is 21% more than last year, but it’s also 19% less than last quarter.

iPads have been doing better. Apple sold 11.12 million of them this quarter, which is 166% more than last year, and 20% more than last quarter.

The iPod is slowly being replaced in people’s purchasing decisions by iPhones or iPads, that seems pretty clear. Apple sold 6.62 million iPods this quarter, which is 27% less than last year.

iOS units sold this quarter were approximately 31.5 million, according to Horace Dediu‘s estimates, which is almost 5% less than last quarter. That number is heavily influenced by the poor iPhone (and possibly iPod touch) sales, since, as mentioned before, iPad sales are basically growing like crazy quarter after quarter. In fact, Apple has sold 40 million iPads so far. Apple sees the tablet market becoming larger than the PC market in the future, and that’s certainly a possibility, though probably not a very near-term one.

Regarding the iPhone’s performance, it has to be said that during this quarter, almost everyone was anxiously waiting for the next iPhone. That didn’t come in the third quarter, so its sales aren’t included in these numbers. And naturally sales of the previous model started to decrease when the iPhone 4S announcement came near. And Apple says that the reduction in iPhone sales came near the end of the quarter, when speculation about the new model reached a new high.

However, because of this sluggish iPhone performance, an interesting thing may happen. Apple’s crown of being the No.1 smartphone manufacturer in the world will probably only last one quarter. Apple has held that crown last quarter, but in this one it’s almost sure to lose it to Samsung, unless the Korean company posts some seriously bad results (which it almost certainly won’t). Interesting is also the fact that even Nokia may once again be in front of Apple. All it takes for that to happen is the Finnish company selling 400,000 more smartphones than last quarter. And with its new device launches over the past few months, who knows, perhaps it’s going to surprise us.

As for the future, Apple naturally expects its next quarter (the fourth of 2011 in the calendar, but the company’s first 2012 quarter) to break records. That’s entirely possible, seeing as how the iPhone 4S has already broken a ‘sales in the first weekend‘ record. Add to that the fact that there will also be a holiday shopping frenzy, and over the holidays, gadgets have become very popular gifts, and this perspective starts to make sense. The company expects its revenue to be $37 billion in the next quarter, which would be 30% more than in this quarter.

• Apple sold 14.1 million iPhones this quarter
• Apple unveils fiscal 2011 Q2 results: 18.65 million iPhones, 4.69 million iPads sold
• Apple posts another record quarter, new iPhone confirmed to come before the end of September
• RIM reports strong growth, 3.9 million new BlackBerry subscribers
• Apple sold more iOS devices in Q4 2011 than all Androids combined, reclaims No.1 smartphone maker spot

When you look at Verizon Droid RAZR specs – LTE connectivity, 1.2 GHz dual core CPU, 1GB of memory, 4.3” qHD display , 8mpx 1080p video capable camera, 16GB of built-in flash memory and 16GB memory card in the box, lapdock and stuff – it does not look that much better then Droid Bionic. Heck, it even comes with the same old 2.3 Gingerbread version of Android, and no Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in sight.

On the other hand, it looks and feels so much better.

Compared to just another bulky Android brick (Bionic) – RAZR is just beautiful. And thin – 7.1 mm thin. And strong – with a strengthened stainless steel chassis, Kevlar fiber back cover, Gorilla Glass display and spill resistant coating all over – you will be hard pressed to break, scratch or otherwise damage it. And it has brighter Super AMOLED display.

Anyway you look, RAZR is a worthy successor to Droid Bionic. And choosing between them will come down to price and how much you are willing to spend on it. For the first few months Motorola Droid RAZR will be selling for $299, while you can get discounted Bionic in quite a few places even before RAZR comes along.

The only negative thing that I can Say about Moto Droid RAZR – it’s that it does not have the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, that will be announced later today. And, since neither Motorola nor Verizon bothered to mention any possibility of upgrade during the announcement – my guess is that you won’t be seeing ICS on RAZR anytime soon. Most likely – you won’t be seeing it until early next year.

But hey, you are buying your Droid RAZR to keep for a couple of years. A few months wait for an OS upgrade is a small price to pay for such a beauty.

• Motorola Droid Bionic costs only $99 at Costco, accessories included
• Motorola Droid Bionic software update rolling out now
• Verizon’s Motorola Droid Bionic discounted at Amazon again, now only $119
• Verizon’s Motorola Droid RAZR goes on pre-order tomorrow for $299
• Verizon rolls out software updates for Motorola Droid Razr and Razr Maxx

But outside of a global commercial success, there are problems with Android in a space that, until recently, nobody outside of specialized corporate departments paid much attention to: intellectual property (IP)/patents.

When the first signs of an infection of the Android ecosystem with the malady of IP infringement showed up, most of us laughed them off. The ecosystem was healthy, and the resources of Google were surely going to give its immune system a boost when needed.

Then the threats from Microsoft against pretty much everybody in the industry began in earnest, and Apple started suing – first HTC, then Motorola and then Samsung. The patent illness has broken out, and it turned out that everybody in the ecosystem was on their own. Google just stood on the sidelines, and did nothing at all for a long time.

Apple and Microsoft – two different kinds of threat

Microsoft and Apple both present different dangers to Android:

• Microsoft is a chronic, but manageable disease. It constantly drains energy from the ecosystem through the payments for license deals, which it is ready to strike with anybody it can infect. The only question is the price for these deals. Microsoft doesn’t want the host to die – it is content to suck out its marrow.
  Additionally it pushes Microsoft’s own Windows Phone as the cure for its own attacks. Use Windows Phone, possibly for the same price as a patent license fee, and the disease disappears. You’re also assured that no other patent disease can attack you in regard to these phones: Microsoft gives you blanket indemnification against any other software patent lawsuits regarding Windows Phone devices. Since Microsoft has been incredibly active in getting software patents, they should have the ammunition to back up their indemnification against anybody else in the mobile space.
  Microsoft’s attacks are about fundamentally altering the basis for a manufacturer’s decision for Android vs. Windows Phone. The results are either Android phones that are less price competitive across the board, and disastrously so at the low end, or an exodus of manufacturers towards Windows Phone.
• Apple, on the other hand, is a deadly illness. They are not in the software licensing business, so their goal cannot be selling a cure. They are running a hardware business with incredible margins. Their goal is to give their own devices every possible advantage out there. To this end they use their patents to kill off as many of their competitor’s products, in as many markets as possible. Apple goes for the leaders in the field first: Motorola – as the then leading manufacturer of ‘Droids’ in the US market, HTC and Samsung – as the biggest worldwide brands in Android phones. They want to take out the strongest competition first.
  With Microsoft paying up is an option. Apple’s strategy leaves only countersuits as a defense. So far the competition seems to have drawn mostly blanks in finding suitable antibiotics here. Samsung trying to use standards-essential patents it has to license under FRAND conditions can well be seen as a sign of desperation, and the fact that so far Motorola also hasn’t produced a silver bullet also speaks volumes.

It is unclear whether some of the incredibly broad Apple patents are going to stand up in the long term (e.g. their frankly ridiculous multi-touch patent), but then it’s not primarily about the long term. Mobile is a an ecosystem of launch fast, become obsolete within a year or two, and by the time any lawsuit or patent reexamination is finally resolved, a couple of product life cycles have passed. Even delays of a few months can spell disaster in a market moving as quickly as this.

So how far has either disease spread?

HTC was the first to cut a deal with Microsoft, several smaller manufacturers followed, and now, with Samsung having joined the pool of licensees, it’s clear that everybody who wants to sell Android devices in most of the developed world will have to do so as well. The financial terms of the licensing deals are unknown, but seeing what Microsoft wants to achieve, the amounts should be something in the same order of magnitude as the license payment for Windows Phone. Figures of between $ 5 and $ 15 per device sold have been bandied about, and this is a range that fits with that. While something like $ 5 is not going to hurt with a high-end device, with a $80 phone it really matters. So far we haven’t really seen a mass defection to Windows Phone, but the next few months might be interesting in that regard.

Apple’s lawsuit against Motorola continues; it has scored an early victories against HTC in ITC court which may eventually result in blanket HTC Android product ban in the U.S.; and Apple is stepping up its attack on Samsung in courts all around the world. It has won the first victories against the latter too, banning some Samsung Android devices in several countries. Samsung is set to take a hit during the Christmas shopping season.

They have started to design around some of the patents (as, incidentally, has Google), but a couple of the patents Apple asserts might reach so far that there is nothing that Samsung, or any other Android manufacturer, can do to circumvent them. Considering the pace at which patent lawsuits usually move, Apple is doing quite well with its efforts.

Google’s announced purchase of Motorola, which was the supposed cure-all for all patent diseases, hasn’t had any noticeable effect so far. The deal itself takes time to finalize, and might yet fall through, so there’s no help in the short term. And then Motorola’s patents haven’t been enough to stop both Microsoft and Apple from suing Moto, or to end the lawsuits before now. It’s quite likely that Motorola just doesn’t have any silver bullets in its patent portfolio. As Samsung’s deal with Microsoft shows, most in the industry have woken up to these facts, and are trying to go fix problems on their own.

So the attacks on the Android ecosystem are spreading. Presently Android still looks healthy. It is huge and still adding users and market share. The momentum is still there. The infections are strictly limited to markets where Microsoft or Apple hold patents, and Android has spread far wider than that. There are huge markets that are not threatened at all by what is happening now. Even without a resolution of any of its problems, with Android adoption in these markets widening, the infection will take a while to show up in the total numbers.

But make no mistake – underneath it all, Android is seriously ill. And, unlike the problems at Nokia or RIM, Android’s patent disease is one that even setting ever new records in device activations, market share and device releases can’t cure.

PS: There is, of course, also the Oracle lawsuit directly against Google over the use of Java technology in Android. That falls into the category of ‘chronic, but manageable’, since Oracle have no current interest in mobile space, and only want to extract as much money as possible without killing Android off. Add another $ 5 – 15 per device to the BOM for an Android phone.

This post was written by a mobile tech enthusiast Alexander Gödde. He works for mobile software  start-up Tavendo, andshares his thoughts about mobile industry in his free time.

• The Microsoft Tax is official: Samsung will pay royalties for each Android phone or tablet it sells
• Google buys Motorola to get some patents. Samsung, HTC, LG and other Android OEMs rejoice
• LG agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for every Android device it sells
• Google officially buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion
• Motorola’s Sanjay Jha openly admits they plan to collect IP royalties from other Android makers

According to the Taiwanese Economic Daily News, two potential suppliers – Korean LG Display and Taiwanese AU Optronics – have recently sent samples of their iPad Mini displays to Apple. EDN sources tell them that Apple has already set the specifications for the smaller tablet, which is scheduled to ship early next year.

iPad mini display panel size is 7.85” and it has the same resolution as the iPad 2.

There is a lot of speculation that iPad Mini is Apple’s  response to the cheap 7” Kindle Fire that Amazon launched earlier this month. But I do not think this is a case.

While Steve Jobs dismissed 7” tablets in Apple’s earnings conference call a year ago, it does not mean much. Steve has been known to publicly deny and dismiss a lot of products until Apple was ready to launch them. E.g.video iPod or even the idea of tablet PC itself.

A smaller 7-8” iPad does have a lot of merit in and of itself. In addition to being cheaper due to smaller display panel size, it will be a much more portable device, easier to carry around, which could make it attractive to a whole new set of customers.

And while Apple seems to have found a sweet spot, “one size fits all” form factor for the iPhone, and has no immediate plans to change that, tablets are a very different category of device. It is a completely new and uncharted market, with a lot of room to explore an additional device sizes and form factors.

Broadening a product range with a cheaper, smaller and more portable tablet should help Apple maintain the market dominance it enjoys now, even longer.

Hat tip to @dnystedt for the pointer

• New, smaller Apple iPad in the rumors again
• Smaller, cheaper Apple iPad to come in 2011?
• Apple iPad 3 won’t be out this year, but was it ever meant to be?
• New Apple iPad 3 to come in Q4 with huge display resolution?
• Apple iPad available in the US on April 3, pre-orders start this month

This time – it is a possible launch date and retail/contract price for the first Ice Cream Sandwich device.

Droid Life has received a new Verizon MAP (minimum advertised list) which says that advertising campaigns for both – Verizon Galaxy Nexus and HTC Rezound LTE – will start on November 10th, with a contract price of $299.

Of course – MAP period beginning dates do not necessarily mean that the phones will become available on the same day, but it is a pretty safe bet. Verizon HTC Rhyme started shipping on Set. 29th – exactly the MAP start day on the list.

And it is an even safer bet that Galaxy Nexus and HTC Rezound will not start shipping before November 10th. Which is a week later then the previous rumored Verizon Nexus launch date of Nov. 3. And pretty much in line with 7-8 day delay of the official Google/Samsung Android Ice Cream announcement, that will now take place on Oct. 19th in Hong–Kong.

The contract price for Vigor and Nexus handsets is also similar to what other Verizon LTE devices cost.

Overall, the new Verizon Galaxy Nexus and HTC Rezound shipping date info seems pretty solid. Lets hope this time it happens for real and there are no more unexplained delays.

• Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus SCH-i515 to come with no carrier branding?
• Verizon HTC Rezound discounted at Amazon again, now only $150 on contract
• New Verizon roadmap suggests the Galaxy Nexus will be out on Nov. 21, Motorola Xoom 2 on Nov. 30
• Rumor: Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy Nexus delayed until December
• HTC Rezound (Vigor) shows up in Verizon system, launch is near

This is no smartphone, let that be clear. In fact, it’s probably the perfect device for those searching for a ‘classic’ non-touch candybar-style phone. Those still remembering the Nokia 3210 in their life, if you will. Or just someone who doesn’t use a phone for more than calling and texting.

The Orange Dallas should be dirt cheap. Orange hasn’t announced pricing yet, but after you read through the specs, you’ll understand that this needs to be very cheap to do well sales-wise.

The Orange Dallas comes with an MP3 player, FM radio, calculator, Bluetooth support, a VGA camera, microSD card support, and a flashlight. The Orange Dallas is rated at 5 hours talk time and 10 days standby time, which should be plenty.

The Orange Dallas will be available soon from Orange on Pay as you go. The operator hasn’t listed a specific date when the Dallas will go on sale, so stay tuned.

• Orange Lisbon and Orange Rio to be launched in the UK on PAYG
• PocketDevice Mphone Radio Number One Mp3 player/mobile phone
• Nokia X1-00 music phone announced, costs just €34
• Orange Vegas launched in the UK for only £48.50
• UK: Orange Rio II is a touchscreen + QWERTY candybar that costs £69.99 on Pay as you go

It’s an “Intelligent Personal Assistant” that understands what you are telling it to do and can perform certain tasks. E.g. reserve a table at your favorite Italian restaurant, reply to SMS, set a calendar appointment, tell you whether it will rain tomorrow, or figure out the distance to the moon.

But the opinion about Siri remains divided.  There is a majority of those whose see just nice voice control and speech recognition gimmicks of Siri and think “Meh”. “’Seen that already, many times. Maybe Apple’s stuff is nicer, neater, does a bit more and is interesting in some limited cases. But still, meh.” And then there are those who know a bit more about the origins, history and the insides of Siri, who think that it is a world changing technology, on par with Mouse and GUI.

So who is right?

The problem is, that beyond some hints, nobody wants to share how Siri works, for the rest of us to make up our minds.

There is talk about interfacing with APIs from various web services, some bad ass AI engine with DARPA/Pentagon origins, that ties things together. There is a cool voice recognition technology from Nuance powering it. And that’s about it. For all that Apple chose to reveal about Siri, they were very tight lipped about an actual technology underneath, and what makes Siri different from the failed speech/computing interfaces of the past.

Let’s fix that right now. With the help of the 230 page patent application, coming straight from Apple’s R&D labs, that thoroughly describes all the technology behind Siri Intelligent Personal Assistant, and shows us why it is such a big deal.

The key difference between Siri and other general AI efforts is that Siri is humble. It knows that general human understanding/intelligence is very hard for computers, and it does not try to do that. What Siri does is – narrow the needed understanding to very specific areas– e.g dining/restaurants, sports events, movies/enternatinment, travel, weather, etc;. And then it fills each of these areas with special vocabulary, databases, web services, rules of interaction and machine readable description of how all parts fit and interact together. They call these specialized areas – Active Ontologies.

E.g. Restauarant/dining active Onthology can include one or several restaurant databases, a number of restaurant review services like Yelp and Zagat, accessed via API, a special dining related vocabulary database, a model of actions that people usually perform when they they decide on the next dinner, an access to reservation service like Open Table and the rules for automatically making a reservation through it and entering the reservation to user’s calendar, specially formatted dialogs related to the restaurant choosing and reservation process, etc;.

After user request passes through the language recognition/interpretation module, with the help of relevant active ontology Siri tries to figure out user intent. After it does that, the intent is routed to the “Service orchestration component” (SOC). This component figures out out what external services can be used to fulfill the request, and translates it into a commands that these services can understand, collets the information, sorts it out for the user and performs required actions.

E.g. to answer the question about good Italian restaurants nearby – SOC can get a list of Italian restaurants with addresses in the city from a business directory, with the help of geolocation service pick those that are within 2 miles of current location, check reviews/ratings on Yelp and Zagat and present user with the list of best rated Italian restaurants nearby. Then, after user made the selection, and asked to do it, SOC will call Opetan Table service API and reserve the table,  enter the dinner appointment  into a calendar via calendar service API, reformat the relevant data for a taxi service API and order the taxi.

The Service Orchestration Component has its own tools for mapping various external service APIs to the actions to be performed by SIRI. Active Ontologies also have their own set of tools to map different domains and areas of human activity. Both of them allow to plug in additional relevant modules, services and databases as they become available. Thus making Siri infinitely expandable and flexible.

While Siri is currently available only on iPhone 4S, this figure from patent application shows that Apple has much bigger ambitions for it:

Apple sees its AI technology not just as a thing to play with on your phone. In a few years we may be talking to Siri in our cars, Macs, Web browsers, home appliances, TVs, stereos and many other things.

As for the topics that Siri may cover in the future – here are just a few examples that Apple lists:

Local Services (including location- and time-specific services such as restaurants, movies, automated teller machines (ATMs), events, and places to meet); personal and Social Memory Services (including action items, notes, calendar events, shared links, and the like); E-commerce (including online purchases of items such as books, DVDs, music, and the like); travel Services (including flights, hotels, attractions, and the like), navigation (maps and directions); database lookup (such as finding businesses or people by name or other properties); getting weather conditions and forecasts, checking the price of market items or status of financial transactions; monitoring traffic or the status of flights; accessing and updating calendars and schedules; managing reminders, alerts, tasks and projects; communicating over email or other messaging platforms; and operating devices locally or remotely (e.g., dialing telephones, controlling light and temperature, controlling home security devices, playing music or video, etc.)

For all the nice stuff that we’ve seen Siri perform on stage, for now it is extremely limited. No wonder Apple decided to slap a beta label on it. But the original iPhone was also a very limited device. And, arguably, iPhone did not really catch up to all the capabilities of modern smartphones until iPhone 4 came out. Even if the revolutionary elements of graphical/multi-touch UI were easier to grasp at once.

Just as with the first iPhone, each successive iOs and OSX release will have a better, more encompassing version of Siri, making inroads into ever wider collection of devices.

Also, just like the first iPhone – Siri is a closed system for now, with all domain mappings and service additions done inside Apple, or in close cooperation with select companies. But it does not have to be this way forever. As soon as the infrastructure technology behind Siri matures enough – Apple can open its APIs to outside developers ushering an explosion of new kind of Siri based apps.

So, yes, from the looks of it – Siri is a really big deal. And speech recognition we are so (not)impressed with now, is only one of the smaller, interchangeable parts of it.

Plus, Apple is not the only one trying to add some intelligence to our mobile devices. And now, that Apple showed the way once again, Google, Microsoft and Nokia can get busy doing the same for their devices too.

Looks like the era of a new breed of intelligent computing is almost upon us.

I was able to give only a very general description of Siri technology here, omitting a lot of important parts. If you want to learn more about Siri, you can download full Apple patent application here (*.pdf, 10MB).

• Apple is working on its own mobile P2P payment service for iPhone and iPad
• OpenTable.com to let users book restaurant tables from their BlackBerry or other phones online
• Samsung wants to block Apple from selling the iPhone 4S in Italy and France
• Apple wants to embed cardiac sensors into an iPhone case to identify you
• Apple sues HTC, says 20 iPhone patents are infringed

After popping up at O2 and at third party retailers in SIM-free form a while back, the Samsung Galaxy W is now available at Three. The operator offers the device both on Pay Monthly plans as well as on Pay as you go.

If you don’t mind signing long term contracts, you can get the Galaxy W for free. Plans start at £22 per month (for which you get 100 minutes, 5,000 texts, and 500 MB of data) and go all the way up to £32 per month. That amount nets you Three’s The One Plan, which gives you 2,000 minutes, 5,000 texts, and All-you-can-eat Data each month.

If you’d rather get the Samsung Galaxy W on Pay as you go, the price being asked is £249.99. If you’re interested in picking up this smartphone from Three, this is the link to click.

The Samsung Galaxy W has a 3.7-inch 480×800 touchscreen, a 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and 720p HD video recording, a 1.4 GHz single-core processor, 512 MB of RAM, 2 GB of ROM, microSD card support, 14.4 Mbps HSDPA, 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 1,500 mAh battery. It runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

• LG Optimus 3D now available at Three UK, free from £35 per month
• UK: Samsung Galaxy S II now available at Virgin Mobile, free from £40.85 per month
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, Samsung Galaxy S free at O2 UK with £16.5/month contract until Monday
• HTC Sensation XE now available at Three UK, free from £30 per month
• HTC Sensation XL now available at Three UK, free from £34 per month, £449.99 on PAYG

First up we have the Motorola Atrix 2, the successor to the original Motorola Atrix. Specs wise, the Atrix 2 spots a dual-core 1GHz processor, 8 GB of internal storage, Android 2.3, a 4.3 qHD display with 960×540 resolution, a 8 megapixel camera with LED flash and 1080p HD recording, a front-facing camera, HSPA+ network connectivity, and 1GB of RAM. The Atrix 2 will also be compatible with the Motorola Lapdock 100. The Atrix 2 will be available for $99.99 on a two year contract starting Oct. 16th.

Second, we have the Samsung Captivate Glide. The Captivate Glide features a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, Android 2.3, a Tegra 2 dual-core processor, a sliding QWERTY keyboard, HSPA+ connectivity, a 8 megapixel camera with 1080p HD recording, and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera.

The Samsung DoubleTime has a clamshell shape with two touch screens, one on the inside and one on the outside along with a full QWERTY keyboard in the inside. Despite the unique shape and dual screens, the DoubleTime’s insides are pretty weak: It runs Android 2.2 on a 600MHz Qualcomm CPU.

The Pantech Pocket has a very wide 4-inch display with 800 x 600 resolution. The pocket offers users midrange specs: Android 2.3, a 1GHz processor, and a 5 megapixel camera with HD recording. The pocket is expected to make its debut November 6th, although we do not have an exact price.

Lastly we have the AT&T Avail, a device manufactured by ZTE. The Avail features a 3.5-inch display, Android 2.3, 512 MB of RAM, and a 5 megapixel camera. The Avail will be part of AT&T’s pre-paid roster.

Kudos to AT&T for revealing not only one, but 5 devices at one press conference. Besides the Pocket and Atrix 2, we don’t have any info on pricing or release dates. We will keep you updated on the status of these devices.

AT&T

• AT&T Samsung Doubletime, Captivate Glide, and Pantech Pocket will be available on November 20
• Samsung Galaxy S Glide launched by Rogers
• AT&T’s Motorola Atrix 4G now even cheaper at Amazon: $129
• AT&T Samsung Captivate Glide and Samsung Doubletime get priced ahead of release on Sunday
• AT&T’s fall WP7 lineup revealed: HTC Titan, Samsung Focus S, and Samsung Focus Flash

Now The Next Web reports that the event has been moved to Oct. 27th and will take place in London. Which makes absolutely no sense. By all accounts, the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus or Nexus Prime is targeted for the U.S. market and, most likely, will be exclusive to Verizon for the first few months. Why on earth would Samsung launch an American device in London?

If TNW’s info about Oct. 27th Samsung/Google device launch in U.K is true, we must be talking about a totally separate event here. Probably a European launch of Samsung Galaxy Nexus/Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

But the choice of Oct. 27th London launch is interesting in another way. It coincides with Nokia World – the main annual Nokia conference, where its first Windows Phones will be launched.

Which is not cool at all.

It seems that Android guys now have a thing about crashing Nokia World parties and piggy backing on Nokia efforts, to get more exposure for their own device announcements. Last year it was HTC, who decided to hold their big Android device launch during Nokia World. This year it’s Samsung.

C’mon guys. You are big companies, with huge marketing and publicity budgets to spend. Do you really have to resort to such tricks just to spite Nokia? Can’t you do an event on your own time and at your own place?

As a guy writing about smartphones, I’m pretty happy if I get an opportunity to attend two major events during a single trip, instead of one. So if you hold Samsung Unpacked Europe on Oct. 27th in London – it’s very convenient to me.

But it still is very not cool to do it this way.

• Samsung Nexus Prime (Galaxy Nexus) full specs and official images leaked in Japan
• Samsung’s Google Nexus Prime likely headed to Canada
• Android Ice Cream Sandwich for Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note coming in Q1 2012
• New Samsung Galaxy Nexus official picture leaks, shows the phone’s back side for the first time
• Samsung confirms Android ICS updates for the Galaxy S II, Galaxy Note, and recent tablets

Confused? Let me explain. If you were disappointed that the iPhone 4S was just an evolutionary step forward, with a few hardware tweaks here and there, mainly getting it in line with what Android phone makers have been announcing since February… then you clearly don’t know Apple. And if you were expecting the Galaxy Nexus to be another Nexus One, you’re in for yet another disappointment.

The Galaxy Nexus will have a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD touchscreen (just as leaked yesterday) with curved glass (as Samsung has hinted in its teaser video), a TI OMAP 4460 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 32 GB of built-in storage, a 5 MP rear camera with 1080p HD video recording, a 1.3 MP front-facing camera, LTE or HSPA support, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, NFC, and a 1,750 mAh battery.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and will be 9 mm thin. It will be exclusive to Verizon in the US, and will be (as expected) a pure Google Experience device. As such, it will run ‘vanilla’ Android, no TouchWiz in sight here.

So if you wanted to know almost everything about the specs of the Galaxy Nexus, you should just have taken a long look at a Galaxy S II. The Galaxy Nexus borrows most of its main features, while, indeed, coming up with a few new touches. The touchscreen (see what I did there?), for example. Other than that, and aside from the fact that the processor inside isn’t Samsung’s own Exynos, oh, and the fact that the camera has been downgraded to a 5 MP unit – this is basically a Galaxy S II.

Just like the Nexus S was, for the most part, a Samsung Galaxy S. It’s not about revolutionary new hardware anymore. The Nexus line’s only strength right now is software. The Nexus One was the first phone to have a 1 GHz processor. It set new standards. The Nexus S? Not so much. But it will get software updates first.

So from breaking new hardware barriers, the Nexus line of phones has turned into a mostly me-too kind of thing. Yes, the Super AMOLED HD display should be gorgeous (pentile matrix and pocketability issues aside), but other than that, nothing’s really all that new about the Galaxy Nexus.

Which isn’t to say people won’t buy it. They’ll buy it because while it may not bring many revolutionary hardware features, it’s still going to be a solid smartphone. And Google will keep supporting it with new software releases. And that’s becoming more and more important in today’s world.

• Samsung’s Google Nexus Prime likely headed to Canada
• Is this the real Google Nexus Prime with Android Ice Cream Sandwich?
• Google now lets you register for Sprint’s Samsung Galaxy Nexus
• Google Nexus Prime to bring Android Ice Cream Sandwich in October?
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus to bring Android ICS to India this year?