Pakistan IT » Nokia

Nokia Recycling Program Envisions a Greener Pakistan

Pakistan IT — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:59:40 +0000

Nokia leads six companies into Pakistan’s first large scale campaign for Mobile Phone recycling- Recycleyour phone and get a chance to win a brand new Nokia N8

Nokia recently kicked-off a two month long Mobile Phone Take Back and Recycling Campaign in collaboration with Ufone, Unilever, Radio FM 91, ARY Music, Orient Advertising and United Media. All the companies involved in the campaign joined hands to improve the environmental awareness in Pakistan and to provide an easily accessible solution for responsible recycling of mobile phones, accessories, chargers and mobile batteries of all brands. Recycling is processing old materials into something new in order to prevent wasting useful material, to cut down on energy consumption and to reduce the need for waste land filling that can spoil Pakistan’s environment.

People all across Pakistan are contributing to the campaign by recycling old and redundant or even broken mobiles that are no longer of use. Taking part in this campaign is easy: simply bring your old mobile devices, chargers, batteries and accessories of all brands to one of the 33 Nokia Care Centres or Ufone Sales and Service Centres across the country. The campaign will give a free gift hamper from Unilever and a chance to win a brand new Nokia N8 device only if person will drop off a mobile phone for recycling (all brands accepted).

Nokia Mobile Phone Take Back and Recycling Program rolled out in Pakistan during 2010. At this point in time, Nokia aims to increase awareness about why it is important to recycle your old phone and how easy it can be done.

Talking about Nokia’s contribution to environment in Pakistan, Adeel Hashmi, Communications Manager, Nokia Pakistan & Afghanistan, said, “Nokia has a comprehensive sustainability and environmental strategy and recycling is one of the key aspects covered. We understand that leadership means responsibility, that’s why at Nokia we consider the environment in everything we do and even go beyond our own operations and products: we want to give that chance to our consumers as well because we understand that a power of a billion people can do a lot of good to our environment. If the 4.6 billion people using mobile phones recycled just one unused phone at the end of its life, together we would save nearly 370,000 tons of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 6 million cars off the road.”

According to Nokia’s global consumer survey on recycling, only 3% of people said they had recycled their old phone – whereas 44% of old mobile phones are lying at home for no use and not being recycled. The survey revealed that one of the main reasons why so few people recycle their mobile phones is because they simply don’t know that it is possible to do so. Mobile devices and accessories contain raw materials which – if recycled in a responsible high standard process – can be reused in many ways to make new things, such as musical instruments or even dental fillings. 100 percent of the materials in Nokia devices can be recovered and used to make new products or generate energy.

Commenting on the campaign kick-off, Reza Burney, Country Care Manager Nokia Pakistan & Afghanistan said, “It is an exciting moment for Nokia to bring an opportunity for Pakistani consumers to make a positive contribution to the environment. Nokia has more than 5,000 recycling points globally in almost 100 countries. In Pakistan, we initiated an awareness drive to help people understand recycling and its benefits, and in addition we facilitate that all collected devices, chargers, accessories and batteries are recycled in a responsible way according to high environmental standards. By working together, small individual actions can add up to make a big difference and we have made recycling old mobile phones very simple for people. All they need to do is drop in the old mobile phone, charger, battery or accessories of any brand at one of our collection points and we’ll take care of the rest.”

Nokia does neither resell the phones nor carry out refurbishment business as there is no control over the quality or safety of the phones after restoration. Instead, Nokia works with carefully selected, approved recyclers who reclaim materials according to highest environmental and international standards.

Complementing its green initiative, Nokia has also introduced a number of green apps on its Ovi Store that help people contribute to a better environment through fun activities. A complete list of environment friendly apps is available on www.ovi.com/dogood website.

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Nokia Developer Contest Kicked off in Collaboration with P@SHA

Pakistan IT — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:43:45 +0000

Forum Nokia and P@SHA recently organized a workshop to help local developers understand the specifications for Ovi store content development. The event instructor, Teemu Kiijarvi, Developer Relations Manager for Nokia Middle East and Africa and Eemeli Kantola, Software Developer gave hands-on training to the participants on Java ME and Qt programming.

Selected enthusiastic developers attended the exclusive workshop in Lahore. At the workshop, a new contest for developers titled ‘MakeMyApp’ was also announced. App Challenge from Nokia is a new contest which is now open for participation. Creative minds in Pakistan can submit their innovation in the form of App for Nokia S40, S60 and S^3 Platfroms. There are four categories and winner of each category will win PKR 400,000. The deadline for submission is June 30th 2011. For more information, please visit http://mea.nokia.com/makemyapp

Speaking about Forum Nokia’s role, Teemu said, “Forum Nokia will be organizing many more trainings in future that will be geared towards user experience. How the end user will react to a mobile app should be an important point to consider for any developer. At the end of the day, a mobile app would have a good selling value only if the end consumer finds it meaningful and is attracted to it. Through our training programs, we want to work together with the developers to expand the ecosystem. Forum Nokia is a growing online community of 2 million active users. Forum Nokia members get access to e-learning/ tutorials and online support to hone their skills.”

Commenting on P@SHA’s collaboration with Forum Nokia, Ms. Jehan Ara, President, P@SHA said, “I’m delighted that Nokia has organized this free of charge workshop in Lahore. It was a very useful session for developers to learn about the latest technology tools – JavaME and Qt, framework as well as user interface for the development of mobile products. These kinds of trainings are important as developer community is increasingly focused on mobile app development. P@SHA feels honored to partner with Nokia to host yet another Developers’ Workshop. We applaud Nokia’s efforts towards mobile application development because a personalised user experience is the future when it comes to mobile communications.”

Expressing her views on the second Forum Nokia Developers’ Workshop 2011, Rabia Azfar, Solutions Manager, Near East said, “I appreciate the interest level of Lahore’s developer community to learn and excel in their chosen field. Forum Nokia workshop is a part of the chain that Nokia has initiated in Pakistan to provide new opportunities to the local developers. The workshop was geared towards channelizing the strengths of local developers and providing them a rich bundle of resources to develop more locally relevant mobile apps.”

At its conclusion, the workshop did not only impart invaluable knowledge to developers so that they can make the most of the application development tools at their disposal but also gave hope to them by announcing “MakeMyApp” contest which invites the local developer community to develop creative apps. Events of this nature are pertinent to take the local IT/Telecom industry to the next level and enable better mobility experience for end consumers.

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Telenor Collaborates with Nokia to Increase the Bandwidth of local Apps & Content on Ovi Store

Pakistan IT — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:10:22 +0000

Adding more variety to its content, Ovi Store plays host to new local apps published by Telenor Pakistan

Telenor Pakistan has joined hands with Nokia whereby applications published by Telenor Pakistan will be hosted on Nokia’s Ovi Store. This was announced at a signing ceremony held here today.

The first of the applications include games and comedy content. WeRPlay & Anahata Solutions are the apps development partners.

Commenting on the addition of new apps from Telenor Pakistan on Ovi Store, Nauman Durrani, Operator Relation Manager, Nokia Near East said, “We are really excited to be promoting Telenor Pakistan’s apps via our Ovi Store. These apps will be available to both local and international Nokia users. While this partnership will allow Ovi Store to host a greater variety of local apps, Telenor Pakistan will benefit from the vast scale and reach offered by the Ovi Store.”

Speaking about the partnership, Usman Javaid, Director Marketing, Telenor Pakistan said, “We appreciate Nokia’s Ovi Store for supporting apps published by Telenor Pakistan. This is the first time ever any mobile operator in Pakistan has ventured into handset-targeted apps. We specially invite freelancers & IT students to write apps for global mobile users. Telenor Pakistan will provide them with development, publishing and promotional support. To promote use of Ovi services in Pakistan, we will also be introducing an innovative data plan for Telenor mobile internet users which will enable them to access Ovi at attractive tariffs.”

Nokia’s Ovi Store continues to expand its offerings particularly locally developed apps so that consumers in Pakistan can enjoy mobile applications that match their preferences and lifestyle. As it gains momentum in Pakistan, Nokia’s Ovi Store aims to offer the most enriched, useful and streamlined user experience.

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Nokia, Microsoft, Stephen Elop & Uncertainties

Pakistan IT — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:15:20 +0000

11th February was the date when Nokia announced its partnership with Microsoft. It’s was just the last month but it already feels like an old story.

I thought the same until I picked up this month’s issue of the most reputed local internet magazine and was disappointed to read the same pre-calculated analysis published in it (which is circulating all over the web).

So let’s dissect & clarify this issue once and for all.

Let’s go couple of years back, when Nokia started losing its market share to iOS and Android and it strongly needed to come up with a competitive product but this time it was not about cutting edge hardware, but it was about the software and the user experience.

Nokia’s answer was not customized Symbian but Maemo which later turned into MeeGo, which was going to be the future of Nokia’s smartphones – but something didn’t go right.

During all this, iOS was advancing, Android was expanding its user base, HP bought Palm and released WebOS 2.0, RIM launched a new & improved version of its BlackBerry OS & a BlackBerry tablet, one company was left without an Eco System of their own & it was Nokia.

They had to act and act fast.

Now if we believe Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop, he said in an interview that when he arrived at the company (Sep. 2010), Nokia then knew that it has to make a strategic assessment & CEO’s job was to lead the company through that.

At this point Nokia weighed all of its options from continued investment in Symbian to MeeGo to other platforms and finally partnered with Microsoft for Windows Phone 7.

You may argue why Nokia didn’t partner with Android then?

Here is the reason: Back in September 2010 Google asked Motorola to stop using SkyHook’s location services on the Droid X, which Motorola had decided to use instead of Google’s Location Services.

If Nokia was in place of Motorola (and considering the fact that Nokia owns Navteq (a $8.1 Billion acquisition)), it would never had nodded the Google’s call.

But now, look at the complete freedom Nokia has – it can modify Windows Phone 7 in any way it want. So definitely WP7 was the choice.

will Symbian Die after WP7 Phones?

So is Symbian dead? MeeGo gone? N-series phones soon to be history? The answer it not what you have been listening to and it is, No.

Symbian is staying in its current status till the end of 2012 and until than it will be actively developed and modified. One example is the new set of icons, animations, customizable widgets and the addition of my favorite feature, the drop down notification bar (yes, they way Andriod has it).

This update is coming soon.

What will happen after 2012? The Smartphone’s from Nokia will transition to Windows Phone 7 & Symbian (particularly Series 40 & variants) will continue to be a part of the low-end phones or plain mobile phones. So it is more of relegation than plain death. But where does MeeGo fit in?

“We are not thinking about MeeGo as the Plan B but we are thinking about MeeGo as what’s the next generation”, “What’s the next wave of business and technological disruption (beyond iOS, Android, WP7). We want to make sure we are leading through that as well”.

These three lines summarize the future of MeeGo as it is the OS Nokia will develop to lead the future platform/OS wars beyond the current ones.

What the future holds, no one knows for sure. Huawei is manufacturing low priced cheap Android phones, there are rumors that Apple is working on a smaller or cheaper iPhone & that too is the plan of Nokia to bring WP7 to all the different price points instead of just a premium product.

Whatever the outcome, one thing is for sure, the consumer (you & I) will benefit.

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Nokia Announces More Cricket Apps for Ovi Store

Pakistan IT — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:43:55 +0000

Nokia has been working hard to buzz up its Ovi Store, and for the purpose, today it announced more cricket-specific games and apps to grab local audience. The new apps include Cricket Free Hit (game), Cricket Wire, Cricket Companion, CricThrill, Cricket T20 Fever Lite and Cricket World.

A statement issued by the company said that Cricket Companion, which was made by a Pakistani developer – currently the most downloaded app on Ovi Store, has been revamped. Nokia said that Cricket Companion offers live match stats and summary. Cricket Companion has been downloaded around 60,000 times with downloads made from several other countries outside of Pakistan.

Talking about the new apps, Haseeb Ihtisham, Head of Marketing, Nokia Near East said, “We decided to offer the best cricket app on Ovi Store this season so that everyone could enjoy this cricket world cup in its true spirit.”

He further added, “We have received some very good download numbers on Ovi Store in Pakistan. It’s great to see that Ovi Store is fast becoming popular in Pakistan especially among the youth”

Quickly gaining momentum in Pakistan, Ovi Store is poised to bring more locally relevant applications for Pakistani consumers so that they can enjoy a truly personalized mobility experience.

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Nokia C5-03 Illuvial likes pink, plays hard to find

Pakistan IT — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 11:40:43 +0000

The Nokia Illuvial collection has silently received a new member – the Nokia C5-03. On the inside, the phone hasn’t changed but it has new makeup on the outside, with pink decals on the back and a matching wallpaper image on the front.

Previous members of the Illuvial Pink line include the Nokia 6303, 6303i, 6700 and the 5530. They came with custom leather pouches and straps in addition to their prettified exterior but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Nokia C5-03, which just lists the Illuvial Pink edition simply as a color option.

Nokia C5-03 Illuvial pink

Still, the Nokia C5-03 Illuvial pink might appeal to someone’s inner Barbie. Color aside, the C5-03 has a 3.2″ nHD screen, 5MP camera, 600MHz CPU and Symbian S60 fifth edition to offer, along with a light-weight eco-friendly design.

The question of regional availability is murky at best – our online research returned the Ukraine and Bulgaria as the most likely places to get it right now.

If you find the Nokia C5-03 Illuvial pink on sale (or coming soon) elsewhere, drop us a line in the comments.

Source: GSM9

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Watch the Nokia N8 and iPhone 4 get test tortured to death

Pakistan IT — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 11:37:42 +0000

When we buy a new phone we are always concerned if its body is scratch-resistant or will it get dirty quickly. That’s what we call build quality and no matter your reasons (just enjoying the gadget unspoiled looks or looking for a maximum resale value) it is important.

Enter gsm9.com and their vigorous test routines which few phones can survive. This time around they’ve got their hands on two of the hottest pieces of smartphones you can currently buy and they are putting them through their paces. And those Russians sure know how to make a smartphone cry like a baby!

The tests that the devices go through include dropping on a carpet and tiles, squeezing, bending, general durability, high/low temperatures, scratching, water/beer baths and the list goes on. Now we’re not going to get into details about them, we are just going to summarize the results.

The Nokia N8 got owned by the water test and didn’t show great results in the signal strength test, either. It got seriously hit in the drops routine, rebooting and malfunctioning as a result.

It did, however, pass the squeezing and the dust tests with flying colors, due to the great aluminum body. Speaking of it, the wear and tear tests didn’t damage it that much, too. Long story short, the guys who tested it weren’t so impressed with its ability to withstand tough attitude, so they gave it 53 out of 100 points.

The iPhone 4 on the other hand passed all the tests successfully. The only thing that it didn’t like was the beer test, short circuit and overcharge tests but those weren’t enough to fail it. As a result, the iPhone got the whopping 94 out of 100 points.

Now it’s time to grab the popcorn and watch these great tests on video. Here’s the Nokia N8 getting bashed and dropped… a lot.

And here’s the iPhone 4 video. Yeah, it hurts our hearts to watch it spin vigorously in that jar full of metal items.

source: GSM9

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Nokia E6 spied again, shows off its touchy Symbian UI

Pakistan IT — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 05:21:07 +0000

We saw the Nokia E6 first leak a little over a month ago, suggesting that Nokia had plans to add a touchscreen into the portrait QWERTY formula pulled off so well in the E71… but there was a problem: the screen was off. Where’s the fun in that? Now another shot of the apparently upcoming Symbian device has leaked — this time in a darker shade — showing an updated user interface with icons that look just big enough to comfortably fat-finger. That’s all we’ve got for the moment, but for E71 owners still waiting for their knight in shining armor to swoop in and offer a worthy replacement, this might end up being the closest thing — assuming, of course, it hasn’t been canceled and you’re still okay going with Symbian for your next phone.

SlashGear, My Nokia Blog

mobilesguruji.co.cc

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Nokia X1-00: Mid Level Phone with Power Speakers

Pakistan IT — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:19:35 +0000

Nokia today unveiled its upcoming phone called Nokia X1-00, which is a low-end featured phone primarily aimed for populated Asian and Middle Eastern markets with mid-level budgets.

Priced at or around Rs. 4,000, Nokia says that they have made this phone to blow louder, thanks to massive 106phon speaker on the back (a phon is a measure of perceived loudness – 106 of them is enough to rattle your window frames, claims Nokia).

Nokia says it has tweaked with frequency response to make sure that sound doesn’t get distorted even at higher volumes.

Other than this louder speaker, Nokia X1-00 features pretty ordinary specifications. It comes with Series 30 operating system, with enhanced built-in music player.

Nokia X1-00 got very impressive battery, according to company’s claims, with this phone you can:

Listen to up to 38 hours of non-stop music.
13 hours of talk time.
Get up to two months of standby time after one full charge

Other Features include:

FM Stereo Radio
Multiple phone books (up to 500 entries in total)
Up to 250 SMS storage
5 built-in Games: Sudoku, Snake Xenia, Brach Rally, Forbidden Treasure, Vacation Solitaire
Supports up to 16 GB Memory card

Priced around Rs. 4,000 – Nokia X1-00 is likely to hit stores by April 2011.

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Nokia will be able to customize ‘everything’ in Windows Phone 7, but likely won’t

Pakistan IT — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 00:32:28 +0000

Stephen Elop, in his financial and strategy briefing continuing Nokia’s marathon Capital Markets Day, just posed an interesting rhetorical question: will Nokia be able to “customize everything” on Windows Phone 7 in order to differentiate itself? “Yes!” was Elop’s ebullient proclamation, though he quickly pulled it back to say that Nokia likely won’t make extensive use of this freedom to tailor Microsoft’s OS. Instead, the company will be cautious and seek to maintain compatibility rather than pushing the boat out too far in tweaking the underlying software. That’s a major shift for Microsoft, who forbade HTC from skinning Windows Phone 7 with Sense,

something the Taiwanese company would surely have loved to do, and limited it to the introduction of a self-contained Hub. Now Nokia’s saying it — perhaps exclusively — has been given the liberty to play around inside WP7 to its heart’s content. We’ll see how important that turns out to be whenever Nokia delivers its first device bearing its new smartphone OS. An insider tip tells us the current plan is to introduce such a handset by the end of 2011, potentially based on current hardware. Who’s ready for Xbox Live on a future version of the N8?

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