Nokia Readies iPhone Response

Nokia remains at work on its answer to the Apple iPhone, codenamed “Tube,” a company official said on Monday.

Shown in a slide at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Redwood City, California, Tube looks similar to the popular iPhone. The Nokia device showed graphical displays, such as a promotion for the movie Shrek the Third. Other capabilities will be featured, such as the ability to upload photos.

“It’s our first touch device,” said Tom Libretto, vice president of Forum Nokia. Interfacing with the system is done via touch similar to the iPhone. He said the company has not published the planned date of shipment for Tube.

Nokia believes it can compete with iPhone, and during his presentation, Libretto compared volume shipments of iPhone to Nokia’s shipments of phones. Since the launch of iPhone in June, Apple has shipped 5 million to 6 million of the devices, paling in comparison to Nokia’s device shipments, Libretto said. “We’ve done that [volume] since we’ve had dinner on Friday,” he said.

(Apple afterward said 4 million iPhones had shipped worldwide by January.)

The Tube will support Java, something Apple has been reluctant to do with iPhone.

Motorola Announces Touch-Screen Mobile TV Device

Motorola announced six new products and technology demonstrations Wednesday that are designed to improve the consumer mobile media experience. The devices include a new mobile TV with a touch-screen user interface.

The new Mobile TV DH02 and the other five products will be shown at the CTIA mobile and wireless conference in Las Vegas next week, Motorola said. The previous version, the DH01, did not have the touch-screen capabilities.

U.S. regulators have not allocated wireless spectrum to allow digital broadcasts for handhelds such as the DH02, but Motorola believes that area will open up later this year or early in 2009, a spokeswoman said. The standard is “far more prevalent” in other areas of the world, she added.

Users of Mobile TV DH02 will be able to click, drag and scroll through icons in menus to reach mobile TV content. For wireless carriers, the device will include support for HSDPA and GPRS networks to allow the carriers to provide interactive services for customers. A few details of the DH02 were released; It has the ability to provide 25 frames per second of digital video and its offers portrait view for navigation as well as landscape view for mobile TV and personal media entertainment. Pricing will depend on individual carriers.

Also Wednesday, Motorola announced a plug-and-play desktop device to support indoor fixed WiMax networks, which are rolling out in some states from carriers such as Clearwire. The new CEPi 150 will likely be sold to consumers by carriers and is designed to provide automatic connections to a WiMax service from a carrier for use with devices within a home. It is also certified for mobile Wimax connections in vehicles. Motorola also will present it during a mobile WiMax demonstration at CTIA.

Analysts noted that Motorola’s product announcements came on the same day that the company announced its intentions to split off its mobile devices division from its other divisions, probably in an attempt by Motorola to show that it still has a robust product line with new innovations.

The other four products are devoted to ways that carriers can improve wireless networks. A new CDMA femtocell will be demonstrated next week, to be installed in a home or small business to enhance wireless voice and data services. Motorola has previously announced a 3G UMTS femtocells. Femtocells are small, low power, self-installed wireless base stations.

Also, The company will demonstrate a single device to be installed in a carrier’s wireless base station that can support both LTE (Long Term Evolution technology) and WiMax, and can be software configurable to support either technology.

In addition, Motorola will provide a separate demonstration of an LTE wireless network supporting high-definition video transmissions, well in advance of the expected rollout of LTE networks in two or more years in the U.S. Finally, the company plans to show at CTIA a network handoff of a voice-over-IP call and a streaming video from a CDMA EV-DO Rev A network to an LTE network.

Panasonic Unviels Touchscreen Camera

Panasonic will soon begin selling a compact digital still camera that makes easy work of sometimes complicated features thanks to a touchscreen display.

The Lumix DMC-FX500, which was unveiled Wednesday at the Photo Imaging Expo in Tokyo, allows users to keep a focus lock on objects in the shot by just selecting the object with a finger on the 3-inch screen. As the object moves about inside the frame the camera keeps track of it and keeps it in focus.

The feature is especially useful when taking shots of subjects that are moving or won’t keep still, like kids or pets, and the use of the touchscreen makes it simple for users with even a low level of photographic skill to master.

In a demo here at the show the camera managed to track successfully several objects although was sometimes confused when an object moved in front of a background that was the same color or when two similar objects came close together in the shot.

A second function tied into the touch panel will put the camera into the most appropriate mode depending on the subject selected. For example, if the user selects a face on the screen the camera recognizes it’s a person and switches to portrait mode while if a nearby object is selected it automatically jumps to macro mode if needed.

In manual mode adjustments to the aperture and shutter settings by moving sliders on the screen and in playback mode a finger is all that’s needed to zoom in or out on an image.

The camera, which becomes the flagship model in Panasonic’s Lumix FX range, has a 25mm wide-angle lens, 5X optical zoom and resolution of 10 megapixels. Other features include a 1280 x 720p video mode and a 16:9 still image mode that’s intended for pictures viewed on a widescreen TV.

It will go on sale first in Japan, where it will debut on April 12. It will hit the U.S. market in May and cost about $400.