nokia

Why is Finland Europe's technology leader? The prime minister explains

Although it's on the fringe of Europe geographically, Finland has for years been at the center of the continent's tech industry.

The country gave birth to cell phone leader Nokia and has emerged as a place where multinationals like to recruit and erect labs. The government and local entrepreneurs are now moving into clean technology.

It can be traced back to policies set up in the early 1980s, said Matti Vanhanen, the country's prime minister, during an interview with CNET News.com on Wednesday afternoon. The country saw the dawning of globalization and realized it would have … Read more

Green is in at CES

LAS VEGAS--Lots of companies here are touting green design and environmental thinking, though in some cases it seemed more sloganeering than anything very deep. Here are just a few samples from the floor at the Consumer Electronics Show:

Among other things, Nokia was showing off their reduced packaging (50 percent smaller; most of their phones now shipping in it; have saved them $150 million to boot)

By comparison, Casio's touting of their packaging reduction was a bit tepid

HP had a large area of their booth dedicated to their environmental efforts, and like Nokia had several people on hand … Read more

Nokia's cell phone speakers

There's always a lot more to find in a Nokia booth than just the company's phones. Typically, you'll find a gallery of Bluetooth headsets and cell phone accessories that round out the company's offerings. I like to scope out cell phone speakers and I found two models, the MD-6 and the MD-7W. The MD-6 mini-speakers are shaped like a black and red lipstick case. At 4.8 by 1.3 by 1.3 inches, the speakers can be slipped into your pocket with ease, and weigh just 4.9 grams with the four included AA batteries … Read more

Nokia's green 3110

Gadgets and green typically don't go together, but Nokia is aiming to change that with its new Nokia 3110 Evolve. The handset is made from 50 percent renewable bio-materials, and its charger uses 95 percent less power than required by Energy Star standards. While photos of landfills overflowing with discard mobiles always makes us cringe, we have to admit that we were a little skeptical of a recycled cell phone. But after we got the chance to hold it, the 3110 did have a nice feel in the hand. Sure, the candy bar design is pretty plain but it'… Read more

Nokia N95 8GB coming to America

If you've got any of that holiday gift money left, you might want to hold onto it for this sucker. Nokia announced at CES 2008 that it will be bringing a North American version of the Nokia N95 8GB this quarter, all for the bargain price of $749 unlocked (zoiks!). The good news is that the Symbian smartphone supports our 850/1900MHz HSPDA bands, so you can just pop in a AT&T SIM card to enjoy those 3.5G speeds. Of course, there's also the 8GB of onboard memory but be aware there's no microSD … Read more

Nokia Music Store

Update: a spokesperson from Nokia contacted me and let me know that, despite what the booth staffers told me, Nokia has "not announced plans or a timeline for the U.S. market" regarding a music store. So we'll have to wait and see.

I stopped by the packed Nokia booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to get an update on the Nokia Music Store announced over the summer. It's already online in the U.K. (PC only), with a library of nearly 3 million songs.

The Web-based store looks fairly standard. But according … Read more

Samsung's 5-megapixel camera phone

Samsung today showed off its answer to the Nokia N95 with the Samsung SGH-G800. Offering a 5-megapixel camera and a 3x optical zoom, a Xenon flash, face detection and image stabilization, the SGH-G800 is a powerful shooter on paper (we have yet to test its image quality). Its slider design also mimics the N95, but unlike the recent North American version of the Nokia handset, the SGH-G800 has a lens cover. And on the whole, it actually looks like a camera, while the N95 was definitely a camera phone.

Other features include an expansive (2.4 inches) 262,000-color display, … Read more

Gadgettes 73: The What We Got (and secretly wanted) for Christmas Episode

N95 and Slingbox: Reese's couldn't do better

Better than peanut butter and chocolate: the N95 and a Slingbox.

If you've spent the money for the Nokia N95, a Slingbox is a must get. The company bought live spots on my program on KGO Radio months ago. My job was to read the copy, not test it. And from the commercials, to be honest, I wasn't totally sure what it did and how to use it.

Then I got one to try and now I totally get it. Wow! What Slingbox somehow does is enable you to take your TV room at home with you anywhere … Read more

Nokia to Google: Android is potty

It stinks to be a mobile phone company right about now. Take, for instance, Nokia. The company has long thought of itself as the king of mobile innovation, yet along comes Apple with its iPhone and changes the rules of the game.

Just when it was at least still in charge of the software that runs on its devices, Google shows up with its open-source Android platform. Nokia, not surprisingly, thinks Android is neither new nor threatening:

Nokia's CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo dismissed Android saying his company had already ventured down that path. "Conceptually, we [Nokia] could have made … Read more