Hands up if you own a gold-plated and diamond-studded phone. Yea, I didn’t think so either.

Earlier today there were reports that mobile giant Nokia is trying to pawn off its Vertu ]brand for a cool $265 million, in the wake of reporting a staggering $1.76 billion loss for its first quarter. The company has had declining sales on its Symbian OS phones, and is putting all of its efforts into its latest Windows Phone lineup.

The Vertu brand is most recognized for limited edition phones that are usually made from high-grade metals and often contain 24k gold or diamonds. Earlier in the year the company released a range of mobile phones to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Dragon, including a model with yellow gold and diamonds.

Gone is the 14 year supreme reign of Nokia in the mobile world, Samsung has the old king beat. With the announcement of their Q1 results, Samsung has shipped out 93.5 million phones in the previous three months, compared to 82.7 million from Nokia.

Of this shipment, 44.5 million were smartphones, which toppled Apple’s iPhone sales of 35.1 million. These two statistics combined makes Samsung the biggest phone and smartphone reseller in the world.

From these smartphone shipments, the Galaxy SII and Galaxy Note are the top sellers; the mobile division in total growing 86% year on year. Meanwhile their TV business grew by an insane 550%, raking in $9.4 billion.

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.

Over at Nokianesia, some new images of Nokia’s upcoming “Carla” OS update have been leaked. The images show some very interesting developments for this upcoming update for Nokia smartphones.

The biggest change comes in the form of the new lock screen which now uses the ‘swipe to unlock’ method, replacing the old Unlock button. Next up is the new on-screen QWERTY keyboard which looks very much like Nokia’s Windows based phones. Lastly the music player receives a small refresh from the aging design of the original. Even the Browser sees some improvements.

All said and done, the new Carla update seems like it’s following in the footsteps of the MeeGo UI  as far as looks are concerned. This new update, though, will only come to Nokia 603, 700, 701 and the upcoming 808 PureView.

Today’s ‘bizarre news’ item is surely one to make you chuckle. If you think you’re already overwhelmed by notifications and sounds from your phone, prepare for another treat. It was revealed earlier today that phone giant Nokia has filed a patent for…vibrating tattoos.

The tattoo would interact with your mobile phone and gently vibrate to notify you of a new email, sms, or phone call. To dismiss the alert, a user would have to simply scratch their skin. While the patent was originally filed back in 2010, it has only just been made public and has been met with plenty of amusement so far. The tattoo would be inserted under the skin in a minor surgical procedure, and later revisions would make the tattoo invisible completely.

It’s mind boggling to think that there would be someone out there who’d actually want to do this, but let’s hope that this just gets filed away in a cupboard somewhere and never sees the light of day. Unless of course, you *do* want parts of your anatomy vibrating.

The long awaited Tbreak Developers Conference starts off today at 10am.  The agenda for Day 1 of TDC is as follows:

- 9am: Welcome and on-site registrations
- 10am – 10:05am: “Introducing the Tbreak Developer Awards”, Abbas Jaffar Ali, Publisher, Tbreak Media
- 10.05am – 10.15am: “Opportunities with Nokia Store and business models”, Praveen Prabhakaran, Head of EDX, Middle East, Nokia
- 10.15am – 10.25am: Blackberry Keynote
- 10.25am – 10.35am: Google Keynote
- 10.35am – 10.45am: Qualcomm Keynote
- 11am – 12pm: Discussion Panels
- 12pm – 12:30pm: Developers Choice Awards
- 12.30pm – 1.15pm: Lunch Break
- 1.15pm – 5pm: Classroom Sessions

The whole day is jam packed with interesting panels and informative classes from some of the leading experts in the industry. In case you haven’t registered and think you can make it down to the Knowledge Village Auditorium, head on down there as we’re also accepting on-site registrations. Today’s highlights, apart from the Developer Awards, will include the keynotes from Nokia, RIM, Qualcomm and Google.

1) Keynote by industry leaders from Nokia, Qualcomm and RIM

The Tbreak Developer’s Conference kicks off with a keynote from Industry leaders such as Mike Al-Mefleh, Director of Product Management – Middle East at Research In Motion and Praveen Prabhakaran, Head of EDX – Middle-East at Nokia who will discuss the opportunities that exist in the Smartphone world for upcoming developers.

2) Discussion Panel

Following the keynote, you will get a chance to listen in on a discussion about the industry with some hard hitting questions about what is being done by platform providers to grow the developer’s community in the region as well as the effeccts of piracy and whether casual gaming is becoming the future of gaming

3) Free Classes from Nokia, RIM and Qualcomm

If you are interested in learning about developing apps and games for Smartphones, then you have a great oppportunity to listen in on free sessions from the likes of RIM, Nokia, Qualcomm and Microsoft. Think of it as a 101 class on development straight from the platform providers.

4) Opportunity to show off your app if you are an upcoming developer

If you’re a developer who is just starting out and have an app that you think could make it big, then TDC is the event to showcase your app to a panel of judges and walk away with prizes such as the latest Smartphones from Nokia and RIM.

5) Honoring the best

Part of TDC is recognizing the best from the indusrty within the Middle East. The nominations for best apps, websites and games were publicly voted upon on TDC’s website and the panel of judges has decided upon the winners. Come and find out who won from categories like best App, best website and best social media personality

The Tbreak Developers Conference aims to bring industry experts from the areas of mobile development, video games development and web development in touch with University students and independent developers in the region.

The event will provide insightful information to future developers on platforms they can use while Platform providers can get in touch with the developers community and students to preach their solutions.

The Tbreak Developers Conference will be held from 14th-15th March 2012 at Dubai Knowledge Village Auditorium.

To attend the event, please visit the registrations page. Furthermore, if you want to nominate an app for the Developers Award, whether it’s Web based, Mobile app or just a game, just head out to our nominations page and register your app there.

Have you ever fancied yourself as game developer? Or how about a mobile app developer given the multi-million dollar success stories we’ve all heard for iOS and Android apps? Wouldn’t it be great to get an idea, nay, a realistic view straight from the people within the industry on how things work? Or what if you’re already on your way to stardom and want a public avenue for your brilliant ideas to be recognized and rewarded, wouldn’t you like that?

If you answered yes to all of the questions above, then the Tbreak Developers Conference is exactly what you need right now!

The Tbreak Developers Conference aims to bring industry experts from the areas of mobile development, video games development and web development in touch with University students and independent developers in the region. The event will provide insightful information to future developers on platforms they can use while Platform providers can get in touch with the developers community and students to preach their solutions.

The Tbreak Developers Conference will be held from 14th-15th March 2012 at Dubai Knowledge Village Auditorium. Over these two days, the event is laid down like so:

You may have noticed that between all the conferences and classroom sessions, we have the Developers Choice Awards as well. Basically these awards are open for nominations for regional developers whereupon awards will be given based on nominations received by our readers. Secondly, all of the nominations will be conseidered for an additional award through a panel of judges from tbreak, Nokia, Blackberry and DIC.

So if you want your app to be considered, do nominate it for the Tbreak Developer Awards. Nominations will be open till March 10th. We have had over 500 nominations so far, so go ahead and join the competition for the best Middle Eastern app!

And for the rest of our readers who want to attend Tbreak Developers Conference, simply register now as seating for each class session is limited.

So, let me cut to the chase – the new Nokia Pureview 808 has 41 megapixel camera. 41. Forty One.

Now wipe that drool and lift the jaw off the floor. Its true. Ridiculous, but true.

The Pureview 808 features the famous Carl Zeiss optical lens, now upgraded and more fancier we assume. The camera will “capture seven pixels of information, condensing into one pixel for the sharpest images imaginable”, meaning that it will capture images in 41 megapixel and pack it down, if a user wants, into smaller ultra-detailed images.

The camera is also a low-light champion, according to Nokia, and does 1080p video as well.

But let’s not forget there is a phone in there somewhere, which features a 4″ ClearBlack AMOLED screen, HDMI port, Dolby Digital Plus surround sound , and 16GB of internal memory.

Interestingly, the Pureview 808 will not run Windows Phone 7, but instead will sport Nokia’s new Belle operating system. The company said it’s planning to bring the Pureview imaging technology to other of their devices but Windows Phone is not happening anytime soon.

The smartphone will be available from May in Europe. It will cost approx. $605.