Nokia Bagged Red Dot Design Awards

This year, Nokia once again sets the bar in product design by winning the prestigious Red Dot Design Award for different products.

The Red Dot Design Award is an international product design prize awarded since 1955 by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany. Red Dot is one of the world's largest design competitions standing for aesthetic forms, well thought-out innovations and groundbreaking trends. Prize categories include product design, design agencies, and design concepts. This year's competition received 4,662 entries in 19 different categories.

Below is a list of Nokia products that won against this year’s entries:

Nokia Lumia 820 and Nokia Lumia 620

The Nokia Lumia 820 is a high-end smartphone powered by Windows Phone 8. It sports a 4.3 inches diagonal OLED display, a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, and an 8-megapixel camera. The phone comes with LTE connectivity that provides the fastest data connections and a wireless-charging option. The Red Dot Design Award jury judged it a winner because the design of the Lumia 820 combines principles that include commitment to purity and attention to detail.

Designed to fit beautifully in the palm of your hand, the Nokia Lumia 620 was praised by the design awards jury for taking the pure color story and giving it a burst of playfulness. Also one of the pioneers running Windows Phone 8, the smartphone uses a 1 GHz dual core processor and aims to provide more value for its price.

JBL PlayUp Portable Speaker for Nokia and JBL PowerUp Wireless Charging Speaker for Nokia

The JBL PlayUp builds on the design of the award-winning Nokia Play 360 Wireless Speaker, making a statement with its vivid colors and bold shape. Adding to the convenience of wireless charging, the JBL PowerUp is a retro-styled wireless charging docking station that features high quality audio using NFC technology. By simply placing a compatible Bluetooth enabled phone, charging and playing music can be done by simply placing it on top of the speaker.

Nokia Wireless Charging Plate DT-900 and Nokia Wireless Charging Stand DT-910
Wireless charging is taking its place as a new and innovative technology. Taking advantage of NFC technology, the Nokia Wireless Charging Plate and Nokia Wireless Charging Stand can charge capable smartphones by simply placing it on top of the charger.

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The Nokia Lumia 720 Journal Part 4: Camera and Beyond (Day Shots)

The Nokia Lumia 720 boasts the following camera specs, rear: 6.7 MP with Carl Ziess lens, f1.9 aperture, BSI, Auto-Focus, LED flash, HD 720p at 30fps; front: HD 1.3MP wide angle. They are not the industry's top of the line but quite remarkable enough or if not, the best among midrange devices.

Well, I have to mention over again that I don't really have much knowledge in reviewing camera performances and its technicalities, all I can offer is a direct general approach being photo enthusiasts and a huge fan of cameraphones for the past 5 years. On the record, I have owned Nokia N82 and Nokia N8 both king of cameraphones in their respective eras, and tried a bunch of devices from different manufacturers. To measure the phone's camera performance, I divided the camera tests into two, Night Shots and Day Shots plus a head to head comparison with my beloved Nokia N8.

As an initial thought, I'm not really expecting a lot from it since by comparison to my Nokia N8, the phone had a lower megapixel count and had no PureView technology like the Lumia 920. Anyways, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, here are some of my personal favorites.

Well, I find the results quite impressive for a mid-range phone with only 6.7MP. Somehow the apertures and the rest of the camera specs and application improvements made by Nokia were the reason behind all these. I didn't really appreciate much of the photos taken while on the phone with all those pixel brought about by the phone's cut down IPS screen but when I transferred it to my laptop, they were astounding. I like the color rendition and the crispness of the photo's, though they tend to get noisy in some parts.

Up next, Night shots, and interestingly, the phone had a larger aperture compare to the Nokia Lumia 920 which I expect to perform better in low light scenarios. Lets see how it fared. Watch this space!

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Nokia Lumia 925 Complete Specs

Perhaps one of the biggest reason why Nokia announced the Lumia 925 in the middle of the year is because they listen dearly to their consumers. Yes, the Lumia 920 was a wonderful device but its not perfect, the Nokia Lumia 928, the answer most of these concerns in a stylish and innovative manner.

The Nokia Lumia 925 introduces a metal design to the framework, more innovations to the PureView camera, new features and third party applications. The PureView innovation includes the most advanced lens technology and next generation imaging software to capture clearer, sharper pictures and video, including the best low light images. New feature includes the new Nokia Smart Camera mode and Nokia Smart Camera that offers an easy way to capture ten images at once and edit the pictures with options like Best Shot, Action Shot, and Motion Focus for creating the perfect high quality image.

Here are the complete specs of the current Lumia worldwide flagship, take a peek and compare.

NETWORKS	GSM (850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 1900MHz) WCDMA (850MHz, 900MHz, 1900MHz, 2100MHz) LTE (800MHz, 900MHz, 18000MHz, 2100MHz, 2600MHz) HSPA+: DL Cat24 dual carrier 42.1Mpbs, UL Cat6 576Mpbs
OS	Windows® Phone 8
SPEED	1.5GHz dual core Snapdragon
DISPLAY	4.5″ WXGA HD OLED  Resolution 1280 x 768 PureMotion HD+ ClearBlackDisplay Sunlight Readability Enhancement (SRE), High Brightness Mode (HBM) - Luminance 300 nits (nominal max), 500 nits (High Brightness Mode); Color depth 24 bit, 6M colors, refresh rate 60Hz Super-sensitive capacitive touch - reacts to gloves and long fingernails; Display active area: 58.37 mm x 97.28 mm 2.25D Corning® Gorilla® Glass 2
MEMORY	1 GB RAM  16GB internal memory (formatted capacity is less) 7GB free in Skydrive with additional storage via subscription
CONNECTIVITY	Micro USB 2.0 HS with charging. A-GPS and Glonass NFC with secure element on SIM WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz Bluetooth 3.0 + EDR BT Profiles: A2DP, AVRCP 1.4, HFP, HSP, PBAP,   OPP, RF COMM API Sensors: 3D Accelerometer, Proximity, Magnetometer (compass), Ambient light (ALS), Gyroscope
CAMERA AND VIDEO	PureView 8.7MP Auto Focus Carl Zeiss Tessar f/2.0, 26mm True 16:9 optics , 1.4μm sensor Optical Image stabilization 3280 x 2464 for 4:3 mode (8MP) 3568 x 2016 for 16:9 mode (7.2MP) Short pulse high power Dual LED flash HD 1080p Video Capture @ 30 fps Video Front facing camera: 720p HD video and 1.2MP still images.
AUDIO	IHP Speaker 3.5mm Audio Connector 2 microphones HD voice compliant
SIZE AND DIMENSION	129 x 70.6 x 8.5 mm
WEIGHT	136 grams
BATTERY	2000mAh battery Talktime: up to 12.8 hours (3G) Standby Time: up to 440 hours Video Playback: up to 6.6 hours Music Playback: up to 55 hours
OTHERS	Integrated wireless charging (WPC Qi Standard)

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Nokia Lumia 925 Takes The Runway Stage And Doing The Catwalk, Thoughts

Nokia finally introduced the Nokia Lumia 925, dubbed purposely by leak muggers as the Catwalk being fashionable and fresh design-wise with its metal and polycarbonate combination, bringing a unique charm and strong physical makeup overall to it. The polycarbonate back comes in white, grey or black variants with wireless charging.

But style and fresh design is only the tip of the iceberg for the phone, it showcases as well, the latest PureView camera innovation, new features and third party applications.

Among the new camera innovation includes what Nokia claimed the most advanced lens technology and next generation imaging software to capture clearer, sharper pictures and video, including the best low light images. 

A new aforementioned feature is what they call Nokia Smart Camera mode that offers an easy way to capture ten images at once and edit the pictures with options like Best Shot, Action Shot, and Motion Focus for creating the perfect high quality image.

The new third party application software on the other hand is Hipstamatic's Oggl, that allows people to take and share high quality pictures to photography enthusiasts from around the world ala Instagram, but in addition, Oggl users can simultaneously share photos on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram (finally!), Tumblr and Flickr.

On-board of course are Nokia services such as the HERE suite of integrated location and navigation services and other exclusive apps like the Nokia Music that is capable of unlimited and free music streaming offline or online.

The Nokia Lumia 925 will be priced around 469 EUR (PhP24,995) before taxes and subsidies.

Thoughts

Well, at least the phone didn't loss the Lumia styling unlike the Lumia 928, it definitely had an edge over design and probably on construction being some parts metallic. But when it comes to camera specs, it didn't have much difference with the Lumia 920, while the Lumia 928 edge the phone in terms of flash and high definition audio recording.

Oh well, definitely an exciting time ahead for Nokia with two Lumia flagship phones in tow.

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