Archive for June, 2011

Nokia quietly unveils the Symbian-running C5 5MP

 

Recently Nokia quietly added the specs of C5-00 5MP to its multiple websites. The candybar Symbian smartphone is virtually identical to its C5-00 sibling, but for the doubled RAM and boosted camera.

The name of the Nokia C5 5MP says it all. It’s an 5MP version of the good old C5 smartphone. It has the same measurements, processor, Symbian S60 OS and features. There are just two differences – more memory (256MB RAM and 512MB ROM) and higher-resolution (5 megapixel) camera sensor.


Nokia C5 5MP

Perhaps Nokia is mum on this fella because the Finns think there’s nothing to talk about here. Well, there might be no reason to call a press conference and heap praise on it, but it wouldn’t have hurt anyone.

Anyway you may head this way to full specs or compare it to its older 3MP C5 sibling.

The Nokia C5 5MP should become available some time in the next quarter, but we don’t have any information on its pricing just yet.

Nokia N950 MeeGo developer’s platform packs QWERTY keyboard

 

The long awaited MeeGo device is finally a reality and it turns out it has a brother – the Nokia N950 is a developer’s platform running MeeGo and packs a QWERTY keyboard along with similar specs to that of the N9.

The Nokia N950 is likely one of the leaked MeeGo devices that was rumored to be the official MeeGo handset for this year. The N950 is not a consumer device – it comes with no warranty, beta software (which has issues) and overall may not work as well as a day-to-day device (e.g. some drivers are not finalized, apps may crash and so on).


Nokia N950 live photo (Image source)

Still, the N950 has an aluminum body, which is always a plus and the slide-out QWERTY keyboard will draw the eye of heavy texters. The screen is a 4″ TFT unit with FWVGA resolution (rather than 3.9″ FWVGA AMOLED).

The 8MP camera on the Nokia N950 has “very similar image quality” to the Carl Zeiss branded camera on the N9 but the camera units are different. The front facing camera is in a different location but the same module is used for both devices.

Other differences include the lack of NFC module in the N950 and its digital compass isn’t as accurate and the battery is slightly smaller (1320mAh vs. 1450mAh).

The software on the Nokia N950 isn’t finalized and won’t get an Over-the-Air update (but devs can flash it manually). Still, MeeGo is a very flexible platform and we’re guessing it won’t be long until someone ports the software from the N9 to the N950.

Nokia didn’t specify a release date or price for the N950 model. Still, MeeGo enthusiasts should be ecstatic about this – two MeeGo devices even though Nokia promised only one

Motorola Milestone 3 reviewed, the 4-inch qHD screen is PenTile

The Motorola Milestone 3 is still unofficial but its first full review just went online. The review confirms some specs, has an interesting discovery about the screen and brings benchmarks, camera samples and hands-on impressions.

We’ve seen the Motorola Milestone 3 and the Droid 3 (those should be almost identical save for the GSM/CDMA radio differences) several times before.


Motorola Milestone 3

We’ve known for a while that the Motorola Milestone 3 / Droid 3 has a 4″ qHD LCD screen. The Chinese site that got their hands on the Milestone 3 however claims that it has a PenTile matrix and offer the following photos as proof. If that’s the case, then the screen should the same as the one used in the Atrix, which we didn’t like all that much.


Proof that the Milestone 3 display is a 4″ qHD LCD with PenTile Matrix

The Motorola Milestone 3 is running Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread with MOTOBLUR, uh sorry, we forgot Motorola didn’t like that name anymore. The CPU is a dual-core Cortex-A9 running at 1GHz with PowerVR SGX540 graphics, packaged in a TI OMAP 4430 chipset with 512MB RAM.


The Milestone 3 is running Android 2.3.3 on 1GHz dual-core CPU

Benchmarks put it behind the HTC Sensation, though that’s for a very early pre-release unit, so the results aren’t totally dependable.


Early performance results

The Milestone 3 packs a microHDMI port and an 8MP camera that can record FullHD video. The reviewers snapped a few photos, but unfortunately, they used the 16:9 option, which doesn’t use the full 8MP resolution of the camera. Anyway, here are the photos:


Sample shots from the Motorola Milestone 3

Alas there’s no video camera sample.