Sources close to The Verge claims that Nokia’s new smartphone, the Lumia 800, will be sold as a bundle when it launches next week, on February 14.

The bundle will cost a whopping $899, and include accessories like a Bluetooth headset, a Purity HD stereo headset and Nokia’s Play 360 wireless speaker. Apparently, Nokia has no plans to sell the smartphone as a stand-alone, which makes the pricing incredibly steep, despite some very decent accessories.

The Lumia 800 will feature a 3.7″ AMOLED screen, 1.4GHz Snapdragon processor, 8MP camera, and of course, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango pre-installed.

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.

While Nokia’s Windows Phones are far from being mainstream or even have that level of awareness in the market, there is a new report that suggest that the company could sell around 37 million Windows Phone devices in 2012.

AllThingsD.com reports that the Windows Phone-based Lumia line of smartphones will be the devices that will make that possible and Nokia has been doing their best to market them accordingly. The report suggests that the sales will reach 64 million by 2013, which is pretty optimistic in terms of projections. But it’s not entirely impossible and the phone could easily catch up if it offers something different from the competition.

We’ll have to wait and see if this comes true, but Windows Phone 7 will definitely be a formidable competitor to the market owned by Android and iOS.

In a recent attack on the Indian intelligence agency by a group called “The Lords of Dharamraja” it was uncovered that RIM, Nokia and Apple all gave backdoor access for selling their products to the 1.2+ billion population of India.

“As of now we start sharing with all our brothers and followers information from the Indian Militaty (sic) Intelligence servers, so far we have discovered within the Indian Spy Programme (sic) source codes of a dozen software companies which have signed agreements with Indian TANCS programme (sic) and CBI,” wrote Yama Tough, one of the members of The Lords of Dharamraja.

Turns out that these backdoor accesses were agreed upon by all three companies for actually spying on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). Looking at the leaked military documents by the hackers, and as pointed out by ZDNET, RINOA SUR (RIM, NOkia and Apple) platform was successful.

Earlier in the year it was revealed that Lords of Dharamraja were indeed the group that was behind the Symantec source code release. And whatever the intentions of such hacker groups are in reality, some interesting things like this do surface from time to time.

It’s been a truly disastrous year for Research in Motion with their latest Blackberry phones disappointing and their new much-touted QNX phones not arriving until late next year. With stocks tumbling down to all time low and investor frustration at an all time high, we now find out that multiple companies have weighed in on buying the company altogether.

Both Wall Street Journal and Reuters report that some of the bigwigs in the business have considered buying out RIM which not only incudes names like Nokia and Microsoft but Amazon as well. Both Microsoft and Nokia have declined to comment on how far the talks went and RIM has decided not to comment on speculation, but the reports seem pretty solid and only time will tell what that was about. The more interesting one of them is the interest by Amazon in the company which is now said to have cooled down. They were considering a potential merger with RIM but never made an actual offer. However, RIM refused offers for a take-over since they apparently decided to fix their problems themselves without selling out. To which I say – good move.

Only time will tell how their new phones turn out but suffice to say that things are going to be even bleaker if they end up failing as well.

Nokia’s Entertainment director, Neils Munksgaard took a swing at its competitors in an interview with Pocket-Lint, where he back-slapped Windows Phone for being fresh and innovative in a marketplace full of boring iPhones and complex Androids.

“What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone has the iPhone,” Munksgaard said. “Also, many are not happy with the complexity of Android and the lack of security. So we do increasing see that the youth that wants to be on the cutting edge and try something new are turning to the Windows phone platform.”

Munksgaard said that Nokia’s approach will be different and won’t join the increasing ‘sea of sameness’ that other vendors seem to float on.

The marketplace is extremely crowded. I refer to it as the sea of sameness,” he said. “When you walk up to a retail shelf at Phones4U and see the number of black mono-blocks sitting on the shelf, it is very confusing to the consumer. We want to deliver services and phones that are different.”

Nokia joined hands with Microsoft last year to shift it’s production gears exclusively to Windows Phone 7. The company has released two handsets so far (the Lumia 710 and Lumia 800), and plans to unveil a new model at the CES next month.

UK based Proxama, who use near field communications for marketing purposes, have teamed up with Nokia and VOX cinemas to give the folks of UAE a small taste of NFC usage. Basically, there will be a Nokia stand at various VOX cinemas in Dubai from now till late December. A Nokia rep will be on hand, of course, to show people how to use the NFC tech, although one is probably not needed.

Basically, people who are at VOX cinemas can walk to this Nokia stand and simply ‘tap’ their Nokia N9 smartphone with the poster. The N9 will get promo vouchers which can then be redeemed for free movie tickets or popcorn, etc. Additionally cinema listings for VOX can be accessed as well as Nokia ‘s regional Facebook page. Obviously, one N9 cannot be used to tap multiple times as a digital signature will be verified to ensure no replication occurs.

Normally these promotional codes or marketing material can be accessed using any NFC enabled mobile, like the BlackBerry Curve 9360. Of course, this offer being tied up with Nokia, specifically the N9, means that no other smartphone capable of NFC can use this offer right now. NFC, gives the ability not only to market products and restrict the advertisement to a spefic segment of the market, but also for a wide variety of transaction services.

This is why Proxama is using this promotion in order to create NFC awareness in not only people, but companies as well. Key targets being banks and public transport services where a tap of your smartphone is enough to enable the monetary transaction, instead of swiping multiple cards.

So for now, all you Nokia N9 users should go to VOX cinemas in Dubai before long, as these posters will be rotated to other cities from next year on. Before any of that, though, just download the ‘Tag Center‘ app from the Ovi store to enable your N9 to be able to get you free movie tickets and popcorn.

Just a disclaimer, be sure to check out the below details before you head out:

Offer valid on Thursdays to Saturdays from 24th November to 10th December, 2011 at VOX Cinemas, Deira City Centre and from 15th December, 2011 to 14th January, 2012 at VOX Cinemas, Mall of the Emirates.
You can collect only one voucher per day. You can only redeem the voucher on weekends at VOX Cinemas as according to availability. Several tickets could be redeemed on the same day on the weekend.

One of Nokia’s WP7-based smartphones, Lumia 900, has been revealed in a promotional video aimed at developers.

The promo offers very little information about the device, except that it has “Nokia’s stunning new hardware” which, along with a “dynamic Microsoft OS”, will make you “amazing everyday”.

The Lumia 900 is expected to have a 4.3″ ClearBlack AMOLED screen, a 1.4GHz processor and an 8MP camera from, you guessed it, Carl Zeiss.

During their “These Go To Eleven” event on the weekend, Google announced that they currently have over 200 million Android devices activated. In just May of this year they had 100 million Android devices activated. That works out to be 550,000 handsets activated every day!

That number is indeed incredibly high, especially after you consider Apple’s announcement of 250 million iOS devices during the iPhone 4S launch. Consider now, that the first Android smartphone hit the market a year after Apple launched iPhone, and you can see how far and fast Android has come along.

Earlier we reported how Android OS has taken over 50% of smartphone sales around the world in Q2, and research firm Gartner says that Android OS accounts for 52% of handsets sold in Q3 2011. Comparatively iOS has 15% market share, Symbian has 16.9% and BlackBerry has 11%. Windows Phone 7 has 1.5%.

Nokia today published a video which showcases a prototype smartphone that does things even the best of science fiction has yet to come up with.

They are calling it the HumanForm, a piece of technology that Nokia sees will blend in with human intuition. The video shows a translucent tear drop-like smartphone that can be stretched and bent at will. The UI is designed to be  easy to use and natural, such as scrolling through items by just moving the finger on the sides of the device.

Another cool feature is the ability to “feel” the image. The concept video shows how a picture of rocks can be ‘felt’ by enabling a particular option and then moving the fingers across the screen to ‘feel’ it. Something tells me people won’t be trying to feel rocks all that much, though.

This kind of technology is unfathomable right now, but as we have seen all these years, technology is not what you can make, but what you can think.