Nokia Lumia 920 Hands On [Review]

Nokia finally unveiled their flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920. Although the phone is still not out on shelves, the launch event allowed us to spend some quality time with the handset and especially the new PureView camera with optical image stabilization. Here are some of our initial impressions of the Lumia 920.

Visually, the Lumia 920 looks almost identical to the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 900. Although Nokia has been recycling this design  for some time now, it still looks beautiful. Nokia has once again used polycarbonate plastic for the unibody design, which has a glossy finish that looks and feels great. 

Much has been said about the weight of the Lumia 920. There is no doubt that the phone is heavier than many of the current high-end smartphones out there on the market today. But is that really a bad thing? Not really. It takes a while to adjust to the weight if you're moving from a lighter device but after a couple of hours you hardly notice it. It's also not that big an issue when it comes to carrying it around in your pocket. The solid polycarbonate body and the heft also means the phone feels built to last like few devices out there. 

 

 

Moving on, the Lumia 920 uses a 4.5-inch, 1280 x 768 resolution, PureMotion HD+ LCD with ClearBlack technology. That sounds like a lot of jargon but what's important is that the display looks fantastic. The colors are vivid yet natural and Nokia's PureMotion tech ensures no motion blur while scrolling. The sunlight visibility is also excellent, thanks to the ClearBlack technology. Compared side by side to a Galaxy S III directly under the sun, the Lumia 920's display was a lot clearer and less washed out. Also, you can use the touchscreen on the Lumia 920 even through gloves. 

 

Now coming to the camera, this was the main feature that Nokia invited us to test. We especially had a good opportunity to test the optical image stabilization used in the camera, a first for a mobile phone.

First impressions were quite positive. The images, on the phone's display at least, looked absolutely amazing. This is partly due to the images themselves being pretty good and also because of the amazing display. Viewing the same images on a computer monitor revealed that quality was far from perfect, with chrominance noise being a major detraction. We were told the devices were pre-production units, so quality could improve with the retail units, which we look forward to reviewing in future.

As for the images stabilization, it didn't make itself felt while shooting stills since the images were mostly taken in bright sunlight that significantly increases shutter speed. However, during videos, it did help smoothen some of the jerks associated with minor movements of the hands, compared to other smartphones. The videos obtained, as a result, were easily some of the best we have seen from a smartphone.

In terms of software, the Lumia 920 is running Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system. Compared to other devices on the market, Nokia's Lumia series gets the benefit of Nokia's superior apps and services (Maps, Music, etc.) and also some exclusive games and apps from third party developers that you won't find on devices from, say, HTC.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, this is still Windows Phone 8, which means the app ecosystem is still in its infancy. Although Microsoft does like to boast of increasing app numbers at every event, the reality is that Windows Phone still lacks most of the major apps and games that you can get on iOS or Android, making a switch a rather difficult decision. In our short time with the Lumia 920, this was the only thing that bothered us the most, with everything else being very impressive.

Nokia is yet to announce when the Lumia 920 goes on sale in India and at what price. It is expected to go on sale some time in January and we hope Nokia does not overprice it at launch, unlike some of their recent high-end devices. The hardware is good enough to go head to head with the best smartphones out there but the software is still lacking, which is something both Nokia and the buyers need to keep in mind.

Dawlance Introduces DW115 CHZ Microwave Oven

Dawlance, the No. 1 home appliances brand in Pakistan recently added another innovative product to their Health Zone technology range; the DW115 CHZ microwave, which provides the convenience of cooking with the touch of a single button. The Dawlance Health Zone category incorporates cutting-edge technology to design state of the art products that provide health benefits to consumers ensuring hygiene and maximum preservation of natural ingredients in meals.

A recent study conducted by Dawlance, revealed that majority of the people avoid using microwave ovens due to the fear of high electricity consumption. This is a prime misconception, infact even if the microwave oven is used for a whole hour, the energy consumed, when converted to PKR is just Rs. 15! Hence you may well imagine, since normally microwaves used are just switched on for 2-3 minutes, thus consume PKR 1 Maximum for that duration, of the total electricity bill.

DW115 CHZ Microwave Oven

The DW115 CHZ microwave oven has been designed keeping in mind the modern needs of present times. With changing lifestyles and the need for convenience, the Dawlance DW115 CHZ microwave oven provides the luxury of microwave baking; from appetizers to delicious cakes and traditional dishes, this particular model makes cooking easy yet fun for the modern household female. The “Keep Warm” feature makes this particular model a must have for the modern woman; be it a housewife or a working woman, the Keep Warm feature is a source of ultimate convenience that keeps food warm and preserves its natural ingredients in the microwave for a longer period of time thus making your meals more delicious.

With 64 built-in-recipes with a touch of convenience, it aims to promote microwave cooking and baking with convenience.

Positioned as a lifestyle product that provides the user comfort in everyday life, the DW115 CHZ is available in a beautiful design of floral pattern and a stainless steel cavity. With digitalized controls, this model also includes the calorie indicator for the health-conscious. The built-in deodorizer function ensures a pleasant smell after every use keeping every meal’s natural flavoring and smells intact as well as ensuring the appliances’ hygiene. 

Speaking about the DW115 CHZ microwave oven, Dawlance Microwaves Category Manager, Ms. Naushin Shahid said:

“Nowadays women have to play multi-faceted roles: being the mothers, wives, career women, socialites and the complete home-makers. For being complete ‘All Rounder’s’ in today’s fast paced world, their prime assistant at home is the microwave and DW 115 CHZ All Rounder Microwave, which not only provides the convenience of heating, but also keeping food warm, cooking and  as well as baking, with 64 Built-in recipes, is the ultimate choice! This not only acts as a helping hand in the kitchen, but also enables the modern woman to win the hearts of her husband, children and all loved ones around her.”

With the introduction of the best in technology, Dawlance has consistently made efforts to provide consumers with reliable solutions for their everyday lifestyle needs. With an aim to create value, Dawlance proves to be the most reliable and innovative home appliance brand in Pakistan that continues to enrich the trust of Pakistani consumers.

Nokia & Djuice Partnered Developers Workshop

Both companies have initiated a new series of Developer Workshops in Pakistan with

an aim to cater to the lower-end of the market

With a vision to cater to the lower segment of the market, Nokia Pakistan and Djuice have joined hands to start a series of Developer Workshops that aim to provide training focused on S40 devices. The first workshop in this chain was held at Telenor regional office where Tony Torp, Nokia External Trainer shared the details of development tools available to develop mobile apps for S40 devices and gave hands-on training to the participants.

Giving his views on the workshop, Tony Torp said, “Yet again it was wonderful to interact with the enthusiastic developers of Karachi, shared with them the S40 background and provide hands-on training on the tools available to work on mobile apps for S40 platform. The developers clearly understood why it will be beneficial for them and their community to contribute towards content development and they all took keen interest in the workshop.”

Expressing her views, Rabia Azfar Nizami, Business Development Manager EDX, Near East, NOKIA said: 

“I appreciate the interest level of Karachi’s developer community to learn and excel in their chosen field. Nokia has been organizing these kinds of workshops for developers in Pakistan for the past 1 year. As part of the chain that Nokia has initiated in Pakistan to provide new opportunities to the local developers, this time around Nokia partnered with Telenor to offer training for S40 platform. The workshop was geared towards channelizing the strengths of local developers and providing them a rich bundle of resources to develop more locally relevant mobile apps for S40 devices which are most popular among the masses in our country.”

Mr. Usman Javed, Director Marketing, Telenor Pakistan said: 

“Djuice is delighted to partner with Nokia to start offering these developer workshops. It is the first time that such a forum has been made available to students & faculty and we are receiving tremendous response from participants. Djuice supports initiatives that build young talent. Djuice Apportunity is one such initiative where we provide publishing, promotion & monetization support for applications developed by students & independent developers.”

At the workshop’s conclusion, certificates were distributed among all the participating developers. Events of this nature are pertinent to take the local IT/Telecom industry to the next level and enable better mobility experience for end consumers especially in countries like Pakistan where majority of people use S40 mobile phones.

wi-tribe Sponsored MMA Polo Cup 2011 in Lahore

Feroze Gulzar burst three goals in wi-tribe Shahsawars 5-0 triumph over Rangers/Blue Star in the MMA Polo Cup here at the Lahore Polo Club on Thursday.

 wi-tribe Shahsawars, right from the beginning, played attacking game and smashed three goals in the first chukker. The first one for the winners came from Nafees Barry while the rest of the two goals in the first chukker were converted by Feroze Gulzar. The winning team did not allow the losers to score even a single goal and remained dominant in the second chukker as well by hitting two goals first from Shah Shamyl Alam and the second one from Feroze Gulzar. No goal was scored in the third and the fourth chukker thus wi-tribe Shahsawars won the match by 5-0 margin.

In another match of the day, Rangers/Blue Star, having half goal handicap advantage, scored for more goals against Guard Group and won the match by four and half goals to one.

In the third match of the day, wi-tribe Shahsawars defeated Guard Group by five goals to half. Feroze Gulzar and Shah Qubilai Alam played superbly for the winners and hammered two goals each while the fifth one was converted by Nafees Barry.  In the last match of the day, eight-star Raja Samiullah steered Quick Link to an impressive 8-4½ goals victory over Sakuf.

Air blue Launches Awareness Campaign on World Diabetes Day

Commemorating the World Diabetes Day, air blue team distributed flyers to

all domestic as well as international flights

 

 

 As part of its CSR initiative, air blue has launched a two week campaign to create awareness about diabetes. Commemorating the World Diabetes Day on 14^th November in alliance with 

Eli Lilly, in the fight against diabetes. Eli Lilli is a multinational pharmaceutical company with leadership in diabetes care.

Air blue team distributed flyers to all domestic as well as international flights and also placed standees at its sales office counters across Pakistan, to create awareness.

 Pakistan, at this moment in time, has the world’s 7th largest diabetic population in the world and there is a grave danger as per the statistics that this number is going to double to around 18 million people by 2015.

Talking about its Diabetes campaign, Air blue GM commercial Mr. Raheel Ahmed said, “As part of this year’s ambitious agenda, we are putting all efforts to make an even better impact by reaching out to maximum audience. For the two week duration of the campaign, we have been distributing flyers to all domestic and international flights and have placed diabetes-specific standees at our sales office counters across Pakistan to highlight the need for people to take proactive measures against this disease. This is a global CSR initiative taken by leading pharmaceutical multinationals and we stand with them against this deadly epidemic.”

Air blue joined this global cause in 2010 to voice the UN hallmarked World Diabetes Day. This platform has proved to be significantly effective in its outreach to create awareness among the people of Pakistan to take effective precautions against this serious ailment.

 

HP Announced its Evaluation of Strategic Alternatives

“HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees,” said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.”

The strategic review involved subject matter experts from across the businesses and functions. The data-driven evaluation revealed the depth of the integration that has occurred across key operations such as supply chain, IT and procurement. It also detailed the significant extent to which PSG contributes to HP’s solutions portfolio and overall brand value. Finally, it also showed that the cost to recreate these in a standalone company outweighed any benefits of separation.

The outcome of this exercise reaffirms HP’s model and the value for its customers and shareholders. PSG is a key component of HP’s strategy to deliver higher value, lasting relationships with consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and enterprise customers. The HP board of directors is confident that PSG can drive profitable growth as part of the larger entity and accelerate solutions from other parts of HP’s business.

PSG has a history of innovation and technological leadership as well as an established record of industry-leading profitability. It is the No. 1 manufacturer of personal computers in the world with revenues totaling $40.7 billion for fiscal year 2010.

“As part of HP, PSG will continue to give customers and partners the advantages of product innovation and global scale across the industry’s broadest portfolio of PCs, workstations and more,” said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP. “We intend to make the leading PC business in the world even better.”

Nokia MakeMyApp Competition 2011 Winners Announced

Nokia awarded winners of its MakeMyApp competition at P@SHA ICT Awards 2011

Nokia announced the winners of its MakeMyApp competition 2011 during the P@SHA ICT Awards event held today. The competition winners in each category received the prize money of 400,000/- PKR in cash while a special winner bagged the prize money of 100,000/- PKR along with a Nokia E7 for a truly innovative app. The four categories for which applications could be submitted were Entertainment/ Fun & Games, Business Productivity, Easier Living and Think Green.

Winners in each category are Mr. Faisal Iqbal of Orison for Highway Racer app, Mr. Bashir Ahmed for Mobile Energy Saver app, Mr. Mohd. Bilal Junaid for SMS Spam Interceptor app and Mr. Azfar Sabih of Lakson Business Solutions for Save Planet app while Mr. Umair Cheema was recognized as a special winner for his app Chanda Mamoon.

The winners were finalized by a panel of judges comprising of Ms. Jehan Ara, President P@SHA,

Mr. Farhan Chawla, Technology Blogger & Enthusiast, Mr. Zia Imran, Managing Director of Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) and Ms. Rabia Garib, Editor-in-Chief, CIO Pakistan.

Commenting on the MakeMyApp competition 2011 in Pakistan, Haseeb Ihtisham, Head of Marketing, Nokia Pakistan said:

“On behalf of Nokia Pakistan team, I would like to express my heartiest felicitations to the winners of Nokia MakeMyApp Competition 2011. We are overwhelmed by the energetic response that we received from Pakistani developers for this competition. With their highly usable and practical apps, Pakistani Developers are making waves not only in Pakistan but all over the world. Thanks to their persistent efforts, every other day sees a new bundle of Pakistani apps added to the Nokia Store rendering it the most popular mobile app store in Pakistan today and there’s still so much more room for growth.”

Talking about the competition, Jehan Ara, President P@SHA said: 

“It is an honor for us to have players like Nokia in the industry who are playing a critical role in furthering not only their business but are also fuelling the growth of innovation in the country.”

Nokia's MakeMyApp competition gave an exciting opportunity to software developers in Pakistan to submit their best work and compete for a chance to win great prizes. The winning apps will be made available in Nokia Store for everyone to download and enjoy. P@SHA become a key partner for this competition and played an important role in spreading the word to the Industry, freelancers and Campuses. 

Entry submissions closed on 6th August 2011 and all eligible entries received were judged by the industry experts. Criteria for choosing the winner included quality and functionality; usability and creativity; uniqueness, novelty value and innovativeness; commercial viability and market potential in Pakistan; as well as Nokia platform compatibility.

SAP Harnesses the Power of SAP HANA™ Platform to Deliver New Real-Time Applications

SAP® Smart Meter Analytics and SAP® COPA Accelerator Software Will Enable Companies to Transform the Way They Work;

 

SAP AG announced two new solutions built on SAP HANA™, the company’s in-memory computing platform. With the platform, SAP is renewing its existing applications and delivering an entirely new class of applications that changes the way people think, work, plan and operate.

The two new solutions - SAP® Smart Meter Analytics software powered by SAP HANA and SAP® COPA Accelerator software - were developed by SAP product and design teams working in close collaboration with customers, using design-thinking principles that work from the end-user needs backward. For example, these new applications are designed to give people real-time insight into “big data,” allowing them to leverage vast amounts of information for analysis, planning, forecasting and simulations in a more fluid, natural way versus traditional approaches that are rigid, sequential and time-consuming.

According to Forrester Research, SAP has emerged as the leading advocate of in-memory computing technology as a key pillar of its innovation strategy: “[SAP] HANA allows SAP to develop innovative new applications that can consume and analyze massive volumes of data in near real time while also providing a cost-effective, elastic computing platform.”

With the SAP HANA platform, companies now can run complex analyses such as simulations and pattern recognition in seconds, enabling sweeping innovations in the way they run their businesses. SAP HANA delivers the following core capabilities: Single database with native support for row and columnar data stores, Powerful and flexible data calculation engine, SQL and MDX interfaces, Unified information modeling design environment, Data repository to persist views of business information, Data integration capabilities for accessing SAP — the SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse component, the SAP® ERP application, etc. — and non-SAP data sources as well as Integrated life-cycle management.

“There is massive simplification happening all around us. Layers are being dissolved at an unbelievable pace; people, businesses, data and machines are becoming more directly connected. This cycle of connectedness leads to disintermediation of layers, which drives end-users to become more empowered and demand better user-experience. This is leading to a fundamental renewal and reshaping in the IT industry, and SAP HANA is helping to drive this change” said Hassan Jamal, Country Liaison Manager SAP Pakistan

Utilities Turn “Big Data” Into More Sustainable Energy Use for Customers

Utility companies today face an exponential increase in data volume generated by smart meters. SAP Smart Meter Analytics, powered by SAP HANA, aims to help utility companies to instantly turn this “big data” into powerful insights that they can use to develop more tailored customer offerings. With the new in-memory solution, utility companies can help customers adopt more sustainable energy-use practices with planned capabilities, such as: Instantly aggregate and analyze customers’ energy consumption profiles by any dimension or level of granularity such as neighborhood location, home size, and businesses or building type, More precisely segment customers based on energy consumption patterns so utility companies can create more targeted energy-saving programs, for example, carbon emissions reduction plans and Empower customers with direct access to energy usage insights via Web portals and mobile devices connected to the software via Web services.

With real-time access to smart meter data, utility companies can improve fraud detection capabilities and load forecasts, as well as design new rate structures that correspond with energy use patterns.

SAP COPA Accelerator software aims to improve the speed and depth of working with large volumes of financial data. Planned functionality within the software will enable corporate finance departments to: Perform real-time profitability reporting on large-scale data volumes, Conduct instant, on-the-fly analysis of profitability data at any level of granularity, aggregation and dimension, Run cost allocations at significantly faster processing time and Empower business users with easy, self-service access to trusted profitability information.