I think we can all agree that Nokia has not been doing too great the last few years. Sure, the Finnish telecom giant has released some interesting smartphones, like the N8 with its amazing camera. But it has not been able to grab headlines, like its competitors, at least not for the right reasons. When Nokia announced its partnership with Microsoft about a year ago, I was actually very excited because I felt going with Windows Phone for its smartphones would allow Nokia the stability and functionality it so badly needed.

Let’s take one step further back, to Mobile World Congress in 2010. There, in Barcelona, I witnessed when Microsoft unveiled the new Windows Phone 7 operating systems for mobile devices. I wasn’t exactly blown away but what I saw, but I was convinced it could compete with iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and all the rest. Microsoft had thought in new ways in terms of the interface as well as functionality, which is not something that can be said about Microsoft very often.

Then we waited. First we waited for any Windows Phone smartphone to appear, and what first came out didn’t exactly impress too much. Then we waited for Nokia to introduce its first Windows Phone device and while we waited we got the N9.

Finally, in October 2011, Stephen Elop stood on stage at Nokia World in London, declaring that the Lumia 800 was “the first real Windows Phone device.” As it turns out, the Lumia 800 is basically the N9 but running the Windows Phone OS. I’ve had a Lumia 800 for a few days now, and I can say it’s a very, very nice smartphone.

But I’m not going to review the Lumia 800 in this article, for that you’ll have to wait for the Tbreak tech labs team to sink their teeth into it. What I can tell you is that Nokia seems to be on the right track again, and that’s good news for you as a consumer as well as the industry as a whole.

With the Lumia 800, and presumably also with the Lumia 900, which I’ve not tried, Nokia has beautifully designed, high-quality smartphones, which run a cutting-edge mobile OS. Sure, the Marketplace for Windows Phone may only have 50,000 apps compared to the 500,000 you can find for iOS, and that is a problem, but it’s a problem that can be made to go away. Nokia and Microsoft have to push hard to get great apps, and a lot of them, developed for the Windows Phone OS. One such app, which many of us are waiting for right now, is Carbon for Windows Phone by UAE-based dots & lines.

By adopting Windows Phone as the OS for its smartphones, Nokia remedied the one big problem it has had over the last few years: Symbian. Now, Nokia can focus on its industrial and product design, something it has always been good at, and spend less time developing an OS. And I, for one, think that is a good thing.

Nokia is in the game again, baby, and I, for one, wish them all the luck in the world.

Picture by Olga Berrios.

It’s no surprise that geeks like me are not necessarily big on fashion. When I don’t have to attend events or meetings, I much prefer being in my jeans and a Polo. However, every once in a while (mainly during shopping festivals with super discounted prices), I’d step into Bloomingdales or Harvey Nichols and treat myself to a couple of nice shirts or even a blazer ( if they’re still called that). Now here’s the thing- different people have different opinions on my purchases. What one person absolutely loves, gets laughed at by another. In the world of fashion, there is no science and there are no analytical benchmarks to prove one thing is better than the other. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

The intro above might seem a bit strange on a tech website but serves a purpose- it’s required reading for the Porsche Design BlackBerry P9981 that I am reviewing today. Ever since it was officially unveiled, I have read countless opinions on how sexy or how ugly the P9981 is. I too, considered the device unattractive when pictures of it were leaked on the web a few months back. But then I held it at it’s launch event in Dubai and suddenly, my opinion started changing. And after playing with it for a few days, my beloved Bold 9900 suddenly feels cheap.

Packaged in a nice box that is almost the size of something you get when buying shoes, the P9981 prepares you with what it has to offer right from the magnetic latch of the packaging. The top layer has the phone and the charging dock nicely cuddled up while going a layer deep reveals the Porsche branded battery (same capacity as the Bold 9900), your membership card and some manuals. Going deeper to the last layer unveils the premium headset, USB cable and four charging plugs serving different parts of the world. Interestingly, no holster is included in the package which tells you that this is not a device that you want to keep hidden inside anything. You can watch our unboxing video here.

The Porsche Design P9981 is essentially the BlackBerry Bold 9900 but in a chassis designed by the company that is associated with being über cool. Gone is the plasticy back and the brushed aluminum looking antenna band, replaced by real premium leather back cover and a shiny stainless steel band. Even the individual keys on the P9981’s keyboard are made of metal instead of plastic. Although it might not look very comfortable, the keyboard on the P’9981 is very easy to type on- not as good as the Bold 9900 but still pretty good. Above the keyboard, you have the four traditional BlackBerry keys and the trackpad- all of which are taller in size and easier to press. The hard metallic edges along with the leather back give the P9981 a feel that is like no other Smartphone. You know you’re carrying something that is premium.

This new enclosure is slightly bigger in size compared to the Bold 9900 but not much has changed as far as layout and positioning of buttons and connectors is concerned. The MicroSD slot has been moved a bit higher making it easier to manage your memory card and you no longer need to remove the battery to access it either. Other than that, all the other buttons and connectors are pretty much in the same spot as the Bold 9900. One change I would have liked to see is the notification LED moved a bit higher so that it sits between the top and front sides of the device- or possibly around the navigation pad.

Unfortunately, we hardly ever get any sales or other market information about the Middle East and that’s also true for Apple. The iPhone 4S was introduced not long ago, and it’d be so interesting to know how well it has done.

Unless Apple changes its policies and practice in terms of sharing sales figures for the region, we’re left with what we can gather from other corners of the world.

If we look at some of the latest smartphone sales figures from the U.S., I think you will be surprised.

TechCrunch has published figures by research firm NPD that show that iOS came out on top in the October-November 2011 time period with a 43% market share in the U.S. Android is still ahead though with 47% share, which is down from the 60% it had in Q3.

What’s also very interesting – although not very surprising – is that smartphones are occupying an increasingly large part of the mobile handset market. In other words, we buy more smartphones and less featurephones and other mobile phones. In fact, two out of three handsets sold in October-November were smartphones, up from 50% the year before, according to NPD. Furthermore, nine out of the top ten phones sold in the period were smartphones.

That’s a lot of smartphones, no matter how you look at it.

For me the biggest surprise, however, when looking at the NPD numbers is that Apple occupies the top three slots of top models sold. The iPhone 4S is number one, followed by iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS occupies the number-three position.

Yes, that’s Apple ahead of all the Android handsets, including those from Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and LG, and that with its iPhone 3GS, a phone introduced in 2009.

That sure surprised me.

We hear so much about the Android juggernaut, that Android is outselling iPhone, and there’s no doubt that Android has come a long way in a short period of time. And even though I am an Apple fan and currently an iPhone 4S user I occasionally stray over to the Android side, mainly due to the wide range of hardware that is available.

Google executive Andy Rubin posted on Google+ that 3.7 million Android activations were carried out on December 24 – 25, 2011. That’s an amazing number, but it seems that iPhone still trumped Android for the holiday sales, as well. For in-store sales at AT&T in U.S., supposedly 66% was iPhone.

But don’t think for a second that Apple and iPhone now somehow beat Android. Sure, Apple has raked in more money to its already burgeoning war chest, and Android may not be top of all the charts, but the force that is Android will be hard to stop. Just look at all the new devices – from smartphones to tablets and beyond – all running Android, which were introduced in Las Vegas.

However, for now, let Apple bask for a second in the glow of having the top three selling mobile phones in the U.S. for the October-November 2011 period.

Photo by Yutaka Tsutano.

The Porsche Designed BlackBerry P’9981 has officially landed in our office and like any fashion product, it has it’s share of fans and critics. It will take us a few days to properly use the device and give our honest opinion but until then, enjoy the unboxing of this deluxe item designed by Porsche Design and RIM.

Please note that the onboard memory on the P’9981 is 8GB and not 4GB as mentioned in the video.

I remember when Apple announced the iPhone 4S some time back and how “disappointed” many of the users on my Twitter timeline were. I kept insisting that it was actually a pretty decent upgrade and even though it looks identical to the iPhone 4- the new internals justified the new iPhone. Thus, I was amongst the first people in line to pick up the new iPhone 4S when it was officially announced for the UAE market. It’s been two weeks since then and I figured that was enough time to write about the device.

Lets start with the pricing and plans for the iPhone 4S- the iPhone 4S is available in capacities of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB in black and white. You can purchase the device from either Etisalat, du or directly from Apple.  The following table lists the price of the buying the device outright from the carriers or Apple.

If you don’t want to commit to any data packages, the Apple Store deal is the cheapest, however, du gives you 1GB of free data per month for a year (as long as you spend over 100 Dirhams per month with them) while Etisalat gives you 500MB of data for the first three months with no strings attached. Other than purchasing the unit outright, Etisalat also offers a discount if you sign up for an annual commitment on a post-paid line. While du also offers something similar, it is only for business users and not the consumer so I’m not going to go into that, however you can click here and find more on that if you’re interested. The following table lists plans by Etisalat.

I chose to go with Etisalat’s plan 2 which I think offers a pretty good mix of data and voice at a decent price. Having owned the iPhone 4 in black, I chose white for iPhone 4S simply to have something a little different and while I like the white iPhone 4S, I think black still looks better- but that is just my personal opinion or maybe I need time for it to grow on me

Looks-wise, the iPhone 4S is almost identical to the iPhone 4 and you would need a really sharp eye to spot someone carrying one from the other. It has identical dimensions and is just 3 grams heavier which is something you won’t notice even if you’re holding both phones together. Apple has slightly lowered the position of the volume buttons and the mute key on the iPhone 4S while the surrounding antenna has more partitions and in different places- probably to fix the antenna-gate issue that popped up in the iPhone 4 for some. Some of my colleagues carrying the iPhone 4 are happy that Apple hasn’t change the design on the 4S as it doesn’t make their device look like last year’s model, which I think is fair to the consumer and so much better than a companies that replaces their top-of-the-line device every quarter.

Even the packaging on the iPhone 4S is identical to the previous model- with the exception of 4S written on the box instead of 4. You get the USB plug, the iPod cable and that pin to remove the micro-SIM tray from the iPhone along with the usual warranty and quickstart guides.

Christmas time means a lot of gifts, and in today’s world, a lot of those gifts are shiny new gadgets. And as research firm Flurry Analytics found out, by tracking activity from over 140,ooo apps, Android and iOS based devices saw a significant increase at Christmas.

On the days leading up to Christmas, both Android and iOS devices were activating at around 1.5 million per day around the world. On December 25th, this number rose up by 353% with 6.8 million devices activated world wide. The number of apps downloaded obviously increased as well, with a 125% increase on Christmas compared to the rest of December. In fact, from December 25th till New Year’s, Flurry anticipates global app downloads to exceed 1 billion.

The peak time for app downloads was around 8pm, presumably after dinner. Although, as you can see from the chart below, dinner with family or not, people couldn’t help themselves but start playing with their brand new gadgets as soon as they woke up in the morning.

Sadly there’s no distinction between the number of Android and iOS users, but I’m sure both Google and Apple are happy. So, did any of you get an Android or iOS device this Christmas?

Etisalat announced today price plans for the most amazing smartphone from Apple, the new iPhone 4S. Offered on the nation’s widest 3.5G network, Etisalat’s iPhone 4S plans will offer multiple options to meet requirements of both, Wasel prepaid as well as postpaid customers.

Update: Added prices for Plan 1, Plan 2 and Plan 3.

Commenting on the new iPhone 4S device and plans, Matthew Willsher, Chief Marketing Officer at Etisalat, said, “As our customers’ data consumption increases, so does their demand for speedy networks that support bandwidth-hungry software and apps on their mobile devices. As compared to iPhone 4, the new iPhone 4S supports twice the download speed with HSDPA, of up to 14.4 Mbps. We assure our customers that on Etisalat’s nationwide HSPA+ network, they will be able enjoy an enhanced mobile data experience with the new iPhone 4S, anywhere in the country.”

Etisalat’s postpaid customers can subscribe to any of the iPhone 4S voice and data plan options on a one-year contractual basis. These plans are value-packed with free minutes, SMS and data per month, suited to varying customers’ requirements. Customers have the opportunity to get the iPhone 4S – 16GB for free, upon subscribing to ‘Plan 3’ (refer www.etisalat.ae/iphone for more details). In addition, customers subscribing to iPhone 4S plans receive up to 4GB data; up to 800 local minutes or 200 international minutes of voice calls; and up to 200 SMS. Customers also enjoy the flexibility to choose as well as switch their preference between receiving free local or international talk time, bundled with their iPhone 4S plan.

Wasel prepaid customer purchasing the device can enjoy free data usage of 500 MB for the first three months. From the fourth month onward, the data will be available for as low as AED50.

Customers can subscribe to the new iPhone 4S plans and receive their devices from any of Etisalat’s Business Centers and Outlets across the UAE. Furthermore, customers can easily upgrade to any iPhone 4S plan of their choice, as and when required. For more information on price plans for iPhone 4 S, customers can visit www.etisalat.ae/iphone.

iPhone 4S, the most amazing iPhone yet, is packed with incredible new features including Apple’s dual-core A5 chip for blazing fast performance and stunning graphics; an all new camera with advanced optics; full 1080p HD resolution video recording; and Siri(TM), an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking. With the launch of iPhone 4S also comes the launch of iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system with over 200 new features; and iCloud(R), a breakthrough set of free cloud services that work with your iPhone, iPad(R), iPod touch(R), Mac(R) or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices.

iPhone 4S has the same beautifully thin glass and stainless steel design and is first phone to intelligently switch between two antennas to send and receive. Apple’s dual-core A5 chip delivers up to twice the processing power and up to seven times faster graphics than iPhone 4, all while maintaining incredible battery life–now up to 8 hours of 3G talk time.

One of the interesting things that running a website like tbreak.com lets you see is how people are accessing our content. It should come as no surprise that the amount of users accessing tbreak.com from their mobile devices has risen tremendously- we get 75% more visitors accessing the site from their mobile device now than we did just three months back. What I thought I’d do in this blog is show what kind of mobile devices are being used.

Not surprisingly, the iPhone proved to be the most popular mobile device accessing tbreak.com with an incredible 36.20%. Another win for Apple is that the iPad came in second with 34.03%. If you add the iPod Touch with 3.53% share, the total percentage of mobile users accessing tbreak.com from an iOS device is an astonishing 73.76%. That means that almost three out of every four people that access tbreak.com from a mobile device use some kind of Apple gadget.

Coming in at a healthy 20.27% is the Android platform which makes up for all the Android Smartphones and tablets present on the market. So between iOS and Android, you have a 94% market share of mobile devices accessing tbreak.com, making pretty all other platforms irrelevant for us to look into. For those that are curious, Symbian came in at 2.43%, BlackBerry at 1.52% and Windows Mobile at 1.33%.

So what exactly were these mobile users accessing? Not surprisingly, the most used page was our movies mobile website that lists movies currently showing along with their showtimes at cinemas across the UAE. The second highest group of pages was again for movies but not necessarily through the mobile site. That was just a tad bit ahead of out tech and gaming websites followed by forums.

So there you have it- a snapshot of what mobile devices our visitors are accessing to visit tbreak.com and exactly what is it that they are looking for from their mobiles.

A few years back, before Smartphones became so popular, the Motorola RAZR was about as iconic of a device as the iPhone is today. With a gorgeous design and superb build quality, the RAZR enjoyed tremendous success amongst it’s peers that just appeared uncool and bulky. Thus, Motorola must’ve had a lot of pressure internally to resurrect the RAZR in a Smartphone form factor and we find out today if they succeeded tor not.

To get the unit for reviewing right away, I received the Motorola RAZR with the charger in a brown bag so I can’t really comment on what the packaging will include, or, record a dramatic unboxing video. However, let me add that I almost missed catching the RAZR when it slid out of the brown bag- it’s that slim.

Design

Measuring 130.7 x 68.9mm the Motorola RAZR is a bit on the large side but with a depth of just 7.1mm, it certainly is the thinnest Smartphone you can find on the market. The entire front is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass while the KEVLAR fibre used on the back not only feels good but keeps the unit well protected- it is the same material used in bullet-proof vests. What I think could have been better is the material that Motorola uses as a frame around the device- it just doesn’t look that premium. Also, and this might sound a little weird, the light weight of 127g makes the RAZR “feel” a little less premium than what I think Motorola is aiming for.

The top part of the RAZR is slightly thicker than the rest of the body and this probably done to accommodate things like the front facing and back cameras, the USB and HDMI connections as well as the 3.5mm jack. On the right side, you have the power and volume buttons while the left has slots for MicroSIM and a MicroSD card. It’s good to see more vendors adopting the new SIM card size. Motorola did have to make at least one sacrifice to make the RAZR super slim and that is that the battery is no longer removable/user-replaceable.

Specifications

Coming to the specs, the Motorola RAZR is pretty well equipped with a dual core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, PowerVR SGX540 GPU and TI OMAP 4430 chipset along with 1GB RAM and 16GB of built-in storage for all your files which can be increased by a microSD card. On the connectivity side, the RAZR is equipped with an HSDPA radio that can work at a maximum speed of 14.4Mbps, 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi with hotspot capabilities and Bluetooth 4.0 along with AGPS. The usual assortment of sensors are also included such as the accelerometer and proximity sensor.

I generally prefer full touch smartphones that have screen sizes of 3.8” or lower simply because it makes it easier to operate them with a single hand- anything above and beyond that becomes a two-handed device. The question is where do we stop when it comes to two handed devices? Screen sizes of 4.2” and 4.3” are becoming pretty common while we have also something along the lines of 4.7” such as the HTC Titan. Samsung wants to take it to the next level with their Galaxy Note sporting a massive 5.3” size. Is that too big to be a smart phone? That’s what we are here to find out today.

Packaged in a traditional Samsung white box, the Galaxy Note comes with a power charger, a headset with additional buds for different ear sizes and a quickstart guide. The battery is also packaged separately and has a capacity of maH 2500. The first thing you notice about the Galaxy Note is it’s massive size. When I received the unit in the office, one of the guys pulled it from the box and put it next to his ear and we were all reminded of the days when the original 7” Galaxy Tab was released with phone capabilities. Visions of having a huge device stuck on the side of your face came back in their full glory. In fact, we even did a blog about that.

Luckily, the Note isn’t as obvious when held to your ear as you end up covering most of it by your hand and thus avoid any strange looks from people passing by. However, give it to someone in their hands and you will definitely get that “are you serious?” look. Here is a picture of the Galaxy Note next to a few devices such as the 7″ BlackBerry PlayBook, the 4.3″ HTC Sensation XE and the 3.5″ iPhone 4 . See the gallery on top for more size comparisons.

Although the Galaxy Note measures 146.9 x 83 x 9.7 mm, it is pretty slim at 9.7mm making it very pocket friendly. I was carrying the device for almost a week between jeans and suits and it felt like any other larger sized phone. Samsung has also managed to keep the weight of the Galaxy Note at just 178 grams which also helps in it being reasonably pocketable. Construction quality is pretty much like most Samsung devices- generally solid but with a flimsy back cover.

On top you have a 3.5mm jack while the power button sits on the right and volume keys on the left. At the bottom, a mini USB jack is present for charging the device as well as connecting it to your PC. The back of the device has an 8MP camera along with an LED flash while the front has an additional 2MP camera towards the top. Near the bottom, you will find the clickable home button as well as two capacitive buttons for back and menu on either side of it. Basically, the Galaxy Note looks very much like an over-sized version of the Galaxy S II.

Samsung does well on the inside as well with a Dual-core 1.4GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor, Mali-400MP GPU and Exynos chipset. This is the same super-speedy SoC that is found on the Galaxy S II but is clocked a bit higher. To keep things running nice and smooth the Galaxy Note has 1GB of RAM and 16 or 32GB of storage space- I received the 16GB version for review. On the radio side, you have support for 21Mbps HSDPA as well a 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-fi with hotspot capabilities and Bluetooth 3.0. The Galaxy Note is DLNA certified so you could stream media to and from it, however, an HDMI port on the device would have been a good addition.

The Note completed the Sun Spider test is 3126ms which is pretty much up there with the fastest smartphones that we have tested. To give you a comparison, that same test took the Galaxy SII 3416ms to complete and the HTC Sensation XE 3184ms to complete- even though it has a higher clocked 1.5GHz Dual Core CPU.