Camera Phones Plaza

T-Mobile USA now offers Nokia 6133 – an elegant and feature-rich clamshell positioned in the middle class. The Nokia 6133 has stylish design with opening-mechanism, combined with a pair of quality color displays. One of them is of QVGA (240x320 pixels) resolution with 16 million colors.

For multimedia-craving customers, the clamshell has a 1.3 megapixel camera with up to 8x digital zoom, and music player, supporting various formats, including MP3 and AAC. A nice feature is the support for stereo music through Bluetooth A2DP profile.

Via mobileguerilla.

Cath Kidston, the queen of the floral prints industry decorated the Nokia 6111 and Nokia 6230i. The Carphone Warehouse has put it all together, offering Cath Kidston's facelifted models in your choice of "Bird," "Pop Flowers," or "Star" designs. Of course, neither Cath nor Carphone Warehouse bothered to tweak the phones' guts to add UMTS or anything cool like that, but hey, the patterns sure are purty anyway.

Via engadget.

Nokia showed up their touch-screen concept phone, the Nokia Aeon, in their Research & Development section. And there are rumours that this is not just a concept phone, but it will be available in February next year. However, no clues about the Nokia Aeon's features. So, nothing left to do but wait, 'cause this phone looks great.

Via Ministry of Tech.

The Nokia 6708 is the latest smartphone from Nokia, and the first to feature a touch screen. Looking suspiciously like the BenQ P31 that was announced eons ago, the 6708 runs on the UIQ platform, similar to the one found in the Sony Ericsson P-series of smartphones.

With a 1.3 megapixel camera and Bluetooth v1.1, the Nokia 6708 seems equipped with yesterday's technology. It is a tri band GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz) phone, so business users who travel frequently will have to look elsewhere, since this isn't a world phone.

The Nokia 6708's 65k color 208x320 pixel display is relatively small when compared against typical PDAs on the market today, but quite massive for the typical phone. The display covers a good 60% of the face of the phone, and is used as the primary input mechanism for many of the phone's functions since it is touch sensitive. It is decently bright, though not as bright as some of the current PDAs on the market.

It is viewable in just about all lighting conditions, though again perhaps not as much so as many current Palm OS or Pocket PC devices. With 262k color displays the norm these days, a 65k color screen isn't really up to scratch on a smartphone. However, the 6708's display does handle colors well, and overall I would say the display is quite good.

As a still camera, the 6708 is capable of taking photos of up to 1280x1024 pixel resolution at one of three quality settings. The camera can also be used to take smaller 640x480, 320x240, or 160x120 sized images, too. When shooting 3GP or MPEG4 video clips, the image resolution is 176x144 pixels in one of the same three quality settings, and the audio can be set to one of two levels or off.

Whether using the camera for video or still images, you have the choice of a number of other settings, including a few manual white balance options (indoors, outdoors, fluorescent, automatic), TV flicker control for both 50Hz and 60Hz sets, adjustments for contrast and brightness, and an option for compensating for a backlit subject. Overall, it is quite impressive for a camera phone. The image quality itself is decent, considering the camera is of the non auto-focus type.

Once you have an image or video clip created, you can easily and quickly send it off to another person via MMS, Bluetooth, or Infrared. I was able to use all of these quite easily, sending myself MMS messages (to both a mobile phone and an email address), and files to my various Bluetooth/IR capable computers and PDAs. You can also move these onto your PC by way of the USB data cable.

The conclusion is that the Nokia 6708 is a dated machine. It is similar to the Sony Ericsson P900 in many ways, and if it were released three years ago, it might have been a real hit. I cannot recommend this phone, even if it is a slight improvement over the P900. There is still the fantastic P910i to recommend over this. Moreover, the terrible handwriting recognition software is a huge hurdle for anyone who wants to use this phone. Therefore, if you're looking for a touch screen phone running on the UIQ platform, go for the Sony Ericsson P910i or the new P990i. The Nokia 6708 is better off in the days of yesteryear.

Read full review on mobileburn.

Nokia continues the "Music Edition" upgrades, and today announced the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition. The phone's memory is upgraded with a 512 MB microSD card and it has a carrying strap, bycicle holder and sports handset.

The rest of the phone features are the same with the regular Nokia 5500 Sport. It has a 256K 208x208 display, a 2 megapixel camera, it is dust and splash resistant and it has sports tracking features: stopwatch, steps calculator, calories burned.

The Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition's expected retail price before taxes and subsidies is approximately 350 EUR.

The official Nokia press release:

<-120x240 Vertical Banner - left->"Nokia today announced the latest addition to its family of "Active" phones with the introduction of the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition. Adding to the well-received concept of the Nokia 5500 Sport, the Music Edition is enhanced with a 512 MB microSD card for enjoying up to 375 songs, as well as a fitness carrying strap, bicycle holder and sports headset packed in a new energetic color.

"Music is a great source of energy and inspiration for many - during a workout, a fitness routine, or just relaxing," says Antti Koivula, Director of Lifestyle Products at Nokia. "To complement its sporty and fitness-inspired design, the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition offers an expanded range of music features and bears the Nokia XpressMusic feature brand which guarantees an outstanding mobile music experience."

The innovative carrying strap of the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition allows it to be worn around the waist or strapped around an arm to ensure that the handset stays in place, even during vigorous exercise. The sports headset also offers handsfree convenience for music and conversation with an anatomically engineered, over-the-ear design. For a complete music experience, the Nokia Music Manager application makes music transfer in multitude of different digital music formats from your PC easy and convenient.

As a sports companion, the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition packs a lot more than just music.
Featuring an integrated pedometer, this "smartphone with a six-pack" lets users know the distance travelled and calories burned during a run. Other activities, such as a bicycle tour or cross-country skiing can also monitor distance and calories with an optional GPS module. Results of workout routines can then be transferred from the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition to a PC to follow individual progress.

When it comes to messaging features, the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition is as versatile as a decathlete. With the press of a single button to activate three dedicated "modes", the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition can switch from a phone mode to stay in touch, a music mode to relax or energize, and a sports mode to help users go the extra mile. With a high-powered smartphone at heart, the handset can even support text-to-speech technology. With two taps, the Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition reads an SMS aloud. A 2 megapixel camera completes the well-rounded feature set of the Nokia 5500 Music Edition.

The triband Nokia 5500 Sport Music Edition (GSM 900/1800/1900) is now available in select shops around Europe. The expected retail price before taxes and subsidies is approximately 350 EUR."