Durban - When two celebrities hook up, two things are inevitable – fevered speculation about how long it’ll be before it all ends in tears and a comical compound name for the pair.
I leave it to the pop psychologists among you to explain why the first happens, but I’ve no doubt about what prompts the second. Brangelina is so much easier to squeeze into a headline than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
One would have thought the tech and business media above such silliness. But the ink was hardly dry on last April’s deal between Nokia and Microsoft, committing the Finnish mobile manufacturer to making the Windows Phone platform its primary smartphone operating system, when the marriage was dubbed WinKia and written off as already on the rocks.
On Wednesday, the couple – Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and Nokia’s Stephen Elop – took to the stage in New York to show off their newest babies, the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 smartphones, both running the still-to-be-released, mobile version of the Windows 8 operating system that Microsoft hopes will be running on tens of millions of smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers within a year.
The reaction from analysts and much of the media to the unveiling was swift and brutal. Nokia shares plunged by as much as 15 percent on the day and a new, more ominous nickname for the pair emerged – NoWin.
I was baffled by the reaction, because both phones are superb devices, easily on par in most respects with the best of their competitors, even ahead of them in some.
I was particularly impressed by what I saw of the flagship 920. By all accounts, it boasts the same top notch build quality of its Windows Phone 7 predecessor, the 900, but with a host of improvements.
For a start, it’s got a faster 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor and the RAM has been doubled to 1GB. Flash storage has seen a similar beefing up from 16GB to 32GB.
Then there’s the touch screen, which has grown from an already expansive 4.3 inches in the 900 to 4.5 inches in the 920, and can now be operated by gloved fingers, welcome news given the recent cold snap.
And to take full advantage of the extra screen real estate, resolution has been boosted from 800×480 pixels to 1 280×768 pixels, with video recording going from 720p to 1 080p.
If there’s one feature, apart from Windows Phone 8, that I’m really looking forward to trying out, it’s the 920’s 8.7-inch “PureView” camera, which includes optical stabilisation, which Nokia’s Elop promised would produce steadier images with better exposure, even with shaky hands or in poor light.
This “floating shutter” technology, he said, would also give far steadier video footage than competing smartphones.
Another standout feature of the 920 is integrated wireless charging. Simply place the phone on a compatible pad or dock and it starts charging without the hassle of plugging in a cable – although the old-fashioned method will still be available.
The cheaper Lumia 820 also impressed me.
It’s got a smaller, but still generous 4.3-inch screen, but has the same 1.5GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, but just 8GB of flash storage which you can expand to 32GB with an after-market microSD card.
A range of colourful, interchangeable “Xpress-on” covers are available for the 820, one of which will give it the same wireless charging ability that comes built into its 920 big brother.
I’m not sure what the analysts were expecting – teleportation or 3D printing capabilities, perhaps? Yes, no prices were announced and they’ll only be available in October when Windows 8 is released, well after the iPhone 5 due to be unveiled this Wednesday. But I, for one, wouldn’t write off WinKia as NoWin just yet. - Sunday Tribune