Nokia held a media roundtable in Dubai recently to introduce their PureView 808 Smartphone featuring a 41 mega-pixel camera. Yep- it’s the phone that was the talk of the Mobile World Congress show this year.

Mr. Vesa Julita, Nokia’s Global Head of Smart Devices introduced us to the PureView 808 by mentioning that Nokia was getting tired of the Mega Pixel race in the Smartphone market and decided to take care of it for once and all by releasing a camera with technology that is miles ahead and will competitors years to catch up. He mentioned that Nokia has been working on this technology for over five years now and has based it on the following three factors:

1) High performance sensors
2) Image processing algorithms
3) Precession optics

On top you see the massive PureView 808 Sensor with competing ones below it.

The Pureview 808 is the first product to feature this new technology and as Tuula Rytila, Senior VP, Portfolio and Business Management hinted, we should expect to see this in more upcoming Nokia phones- so don’t be surprised to see it on a Windows Phone 8 based Lumia phone in the near future as well.

While I was allowed to take pictures from the Nokia PureView 808, I was asked not to share these pictures as the device is still work in progress and the image quality will be further tweaked. Thus, the best I can show is the screen of the PureView with the picture I took from it as well as my iPhone 4S. You can immediately tell that the PureView has a wider-angle lens than the iPhone 4S but for anything above and beyond that, you will have to wait.

Following the roundtable, Mr. Vesa was kind enough to sit down with me and talk a little bit more about this exciting new device from Nokia and technology behind it.

During the second day of Tbreak Developer’s Conference, the Windows Phone classroom session was headed by Ahmed Adel from Microsoft. Adel talked about the ins and outs of developing for Windows Phone in the region, how Yalla Apps is currently being used as a stopgap for local developer, Adel also confirmed that Windows Phone Marketplace will be launching this month for our region.

The session then mostly consisted of a live coding session in .Net, all of which you can catch in the video below.

Alec Saunders joined RIM last year in August and his job is to get developers onboard to build apps on for BlackBerry platforms. He was present at the BlackBerry Developer’s Conference in Amsterdam last week and I got the opportunity to sit down and speak with him about topics like why is it hard to get developer’s to build applications for BlackBerry and why apps like Skype or Tango aren’t available.

He had a few interesting things to say about the BlackBerry platform but at the same time, there were some answers that made me think that he might have gotten absorbed into the “Everything is awesome” delusion that we have seen some other execs at RIM exhibit.

While RIM hasn’t had a fantastic past year, things looked pretty upbeat at the BlackBerry Developer’s Conference in Amsterdam last week. With a new CEO and a new 2.0 OS for the PlayBook that is basically setting the fundamentals for BlackBerry’s next Smartphone OS BB10, things just might be on track for a company that has swallowed more that it’s fair share of criticism form the media.

On the show, RIM was showing off PlayBook with the new OS and I managed to play around with it for a few minutes. Of most interest to me was the email functionality and I was pleasantly surprised to find social media integration built within the native PIM clients such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Honestly, if this is what RIM had come out with in the first place when launching the PlayBook, the tablet landscape might have looked very different.

Check out the video below to see what you can expect as far as your email and social accounts are concerned with PlayBook 2.0- hopefully arriving within the next couple of weeks.

]]> http://tbreak.com/tech/2012/02/hands-on-with-the-playbook-os-2-0-email-and-social-features/feed/ 0 http://tbreak.com/tech/2012/02/bmw-safety-features/ http://tbreak.com/tech/2012/02/bmw-safety-features/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:30:53 +0000 Abbas Jaffar Ali http://tbreak.com/tech/?p=54219

BMW was present at the Arab Health exhibition held at the Dubai World Trade Center last week and I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Stephan Rauscher, Safety Engineer for BMW Global who explained how BMW is actively involved with passenger safety in their vehicles. Besides the passive features such as your seat belt, there are many electronic features in today’s BMW cars that, through sensors, detect a possibility of collision and accordingly inform the driver or make adjustments to your vehicle. Examples of such situations include your car moving out of the car tracks or detection of an object ahead of you at a slower speed.

Other than these safety features, Stefan also explained about BMW’s call center which is currently not available in the UAE, but is in Kuwait. The call center sends a crash report to an agent informing them of all passengers in the car, the area where the car was hit as well as other data such as the location of the accident. Again, the video below explains how it works by emulating a crash.

As you can see, BMW is really focusing on the safety aspect of their vehicles and considering how fast people tend to drive in the UAE, this is a good thing.

If you’re a fan of the TV show “The Office,” and like Valves evergreen Counter-Strike franchise, you need to see this video. The video shows how a fan of the show has mapped the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Products company in painstaking, bone-breaking detail. The cubicles, the chairs, even the lamps and office supplies are almost exactly like how you would see them placed in the show.

It seems that this project began a good two years ago and the mapper has since logged around 500 hours worth of mapping and amazingly he feels that the map is not yet complete. Since the map is not available for public download, its hard to judge how fun or playable  it will turn out to be.

Apparently, the mapper is now looking for an experienced enthusiast to now take over and take the project through to completion. If you have the necessary skills, do go over to his YouTube page and give him a shout.

Nokia certainly understands cool. Have a look at the video below which is a promo they have done in London for their recently launched Lumia Smartphone based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS. It’s a bit on the long side at over five minutes but it is one that will make Christopher Nolan proud.

We have a few buildings in Dubai that can pull this off too- anyone at Nokia ME listening?

Not only does competition help the end-user by providing a better products cheaper, but sometimes it also provides good entertainment while doing so. This new ad by Samsung for the Galaxy S II takes a shot at our favorite iDevice and will definitely put a smile on your face.

Did you know that RIM processes 22 petaytes of data per month? FYI, a petabyte is 1000 terabytes. Yes, that’s a lot of data. We found that, as well as some info on the upcoming BBX platform during our session with Rory O’Neill, VP, Software and Services for Research In Motion who was in Dubai for The BlackBerry Innovation Forum last week.

I’d like to thank Rory for his time and am excited about RIM’s upcoming BBX devices scheduled to make an appearance some time next year- hopefully sooner than later.

At the BlackBerry Innovators forum in Dubai, I saw more than a couple of BlackBerry Bold 9900 devices in white and I must say that they look pretty slick. The stainless steel band with the white color looks more premium than the black version. RIM has also changed the back from a carbon-fiber design to a stripes design, adding more elegance.

I’ve been told that Axiom in the UAE might be selling them although no confirmation yet.