Nokia World 09 brings new smartphones, netbooks
On Wednesday, the Nokia World 09 show began in Stuttgart.
The annual two-day conference is the Finnish handset maker's chance to show off its latest products, which this year include its first netbook, the Booklet 3G, and its first Linux phone, the N900.
Nokia first revealed its Booklet 3G netbook, which will run Windows 7, towards the end of August.
However, the full specifications of the device — Nokia's first foray into the PC manufacturing business since the 1980s — were only released on Wednesday.
It was already known before then that the Booklet 3G would have high-definition video capabilities, as shown by its HDMI port and 1280x720-pixel screen resolution. The details released on Wednesday show that this HD functionality is supported by Intel's Poulsbo chipset, which makes 720-pixel and 1080-pixel video work with Atom processors — in this case, the Z530.
Another new detail is that the 12-hour battery Nokia claims for the Booklet 3G comes from a 16-cell battery, which is unusually large for a laptop.
Other specification details to emerge include the Booklet 3G's built-in accelerometer — a sensor that detects the physical orientation of the device — and the fact that the netbook's 1GB of RAM is soldered down, making user upgrades impossible.
Nokia officially unveiled the much-rumoured N97 Mini on Wednesday.
The device is, according to a statement from the manufacturer, a "companion" to the N97, Nokia's flagship smartphone. The Mini is slightly smaller than the N97 and does not include the directional pad that accompanies the larger handset's Qwerty keyboard.
The 138g N97 Mini has a 5-megapixel camera, 8GB of on-board memory and a 3.2-inch, 640x360-pixel resistive touchscreen.
The N97 Mini also includes the fruit of a newly-announced partnership between Nokia and Facebook, in the form of what Nokia calls 'lifecasting'. This application uses the Ovi Maps service to let the user publish their location alongside their status updates.
Lifecasting functionality will also come to the larger N97 as part of a major firmware update, scheduled for October.
The N900 was first announced at the end of August. It is the latest in Nokia's line of Maemo Linux tablets, but the first of them to include cellular connectivity. Whereas previous models, such as the N810, only offered Wi-Fi connectivity for web surfing and messaging services, the N900 uses HSPA super-3G.