At Microsoft’s Build developer summit today, future subsidiary Nokia has unveiled its new Windows Phone flagship device, the Lumia 930. Serving as true successor to the Lumia 920 (because the 925, 928, 1020 and 1520 just don’t cut it) which debuted in September 2012, the 930 is effectively Verizon’s recent Lumia Icon for a global market, with the relatively uninspired design being improved tremendously by the addition of chromatic rears, including black, white, green and, finally, orange. Continue reading →
It’s been a busy week in consumer technology and the world in general but also for our podcast squadron, who didn’t really have a chance to meet up and talk tech. Chris and Xavier found half an hour on Sunday night, though, so here is a show where we sound totally unprepared and blast through the headlines like there’s no tomorrow. WARNING: The creepy voice of Chris lives on, dear listener.
Earlier this week, I published my extensive review of Nokia’s Lumia 720. If you haven’t read and watched it already, I’d sincerely recommend that you check it out, but today I’m bringing a new option of consuming our written word to the table. Alex, the lovely robot found within iTunes on Mac OS X, has made an audio version of my post which sounds remarkably good for one of these text-to-speech things. The concept of audio reviews is something I’ve been considering for a while now, so if you think it’s worth us continuing (even if we have to replace Alex with a human or alternative robot voice) give us a shout in the comments or on Twitter.
For years, Nokia has known that the best way to expand market share is to saturate every corner of it with a device. After an initial launch of just two devices in late 2011, Lumia devices are now available at seemingly every price point from £99 to £499, and one of the latest devices to join the range, the Lumia 720, sits firmly in the middle of this vast expanse, priced at around £249 unlocked. It follows on from the Lumia 710, which I reviewed last year and felt was a bargain considering its low price and high quality, but the 720 faces fierce competition from a sea of Android-powered handsets including diminutive versions of the top-selling flagships from HTC and Samsung. As such, is this mid-range combination of Windows Phone 8 and Nokia’s trademark hardware design worth your attention? Read on to find out.
For the one true episode 014 of our now adolescent podcast, Xavier and Chris make up for lost time by talking about everything important since the Lumia 1020 happened. It turns out that this includes a fair bit about the 1020 itself, but our dynamic duo (sorry Henry) also trawl through news about its baby big brother, a new family of Droids from Motorola and Verizon with the Moto X launch looming later this week and HTC’s quest for profitability with One variants both big and small. Samsung, on the other hand, go full-on with the purple and Canonical decide that a crowdfunding campaign to make an Ubuntu phone with a sapphire crystal display makes perfect sense. There’s also a new BlackBerry leak if you’re into that kind of phone and Google’s new Nexus 7 and Chromecast streaming HDMI dongle thing.
Nokia may have given us 41 million reasons to zoom in yesterday, but today Xavier and Chris bring you 1020 reasons to listen to the podcast, as our second episode this week focuses on Nokia’s new Lumia 1020 and its 41MP sensor.
Twelve. That’s a mighty large number, and it’s also the number of topics in the show notes for our return from yet another unintentional hiatus. While Henry lies in a field getting fried by the British heatwave, Xavier and Chris take cover in the depths of the night to talk about Apple’s mobile product lines and web ambitions, imminent announcements from Nokia and Motorola, new devices from Sony and HTC that are scaring Xavier’s wallet and leaked information about upcoming phablets from the Korean pairing of LG and Samsung. Chris goes on to wax lyrical about rap music while Xavier enthuses about The Last of Us while finding it horribly difficult (yet completely possible) to avoid spoilers. We also answer some user questions from Twitter, thanks to our wonderful listeners and #AskChris, which we’ve chosen to hijack.
If you have any feedback, questions or comments, tweet us or send us an email to podcast@digixav.com. We’d love to hear from you!
It’s been a bit of a crazy week, best epitomised by John McAfee going mental. There’s also been a trailer for The Lego Movie, an Xbox 180 and even a new portrait QWERTY phone from NEC. Less excitingly, Samsung, Instagram and HTC all hosted events, while Nokia promised one in early July. As ever, Chris and Xavier digest it all so you don’t have to, and Henry calls in for the final seconds despite our plethora of technical issues.
If you have any feedback, questions or comments, tweet us or send us an email to podcast@digixav.com. We’d love to hear what you think!
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