Przedstawiciel PLAY LUBLIN

Nokia Music isn’t just about listening to your favourite tracks, it’s about finding new ones, too. It’s this joy of discovery, which recently led Nokia Music to work with the legendary film festival Sundance and some of the world’s most respected independent directors, to produce a unique six-part documentary.

Making noise about American music

New American Noise shines a light on the underground music scene in six American cities. By detailing the incredible diversity of musical subcultures, it gives an unprecedented insight into the lives and passions of today’s music fans.

The response to this series has been phenomenal, so to further explore this fascinating theme Nokia is now teaming up with Sundance London (2013). This time, though, we’re challenging filmmakers and directors across the globe to investigate the music scenes in other cities.

The amazing, the unusual, the unknown

For the Nokia Music Short Film Competition, in association with Sundance London, The Nokia Music team want directors to showcase the amazing, the unusual and the unknown. This might be a unique musical identity or an authentic sound from their city. Ideally it should also show how cultures coming together give shape to the tunes coming from their part of the world.

Excite us with a mobile movie

To grasp this exciting opportunity, filmmakers need to simply upload a short video trailer (15 sec – 1 min) visualizing the underground music scene in their chosen city. If you’d like to get involved, think of this trailer as an audition, which showcases your concept. Nokia, in association with Sundance London (2013), is looking for creative ideas that really push the boundaries of the camera and the possibilities of mobile filmmaking. We are open to all styles and approaches, just make sure you clearly describe what you intend to create.

If your idea is chosen, you’ll receive two Nokia Lumia 920s and a $5,000 budget to shoot your film. What’s more, both films are guaranteed a premiere at the Sundance London Film & Music Festival (2013) in April, and one lucky grand prizewinner will walk away with $5,000 and a Nokia Lumia 920.

Up for the challenge? If so, we look forward to checking out your mobile movie magic soon.

Built right into the Nokia Lumia 920, Lumia 820, or Lumia 620, is an amazing audio equaliser, called Nokia Audio. If you love to pop on a pair of headphones and lose yourself in an album or a movie on your Nokia Lumia, keep reading on how to get the best possible audible experience.

Head over to the settings section in your phone and look for the Audio option near the bottom of the system list. It’s within here that you can do as much, or as little, tweaking to the audio levels as you want.

The interface is really simple to use and the first screen is where you can play with the levels within the equaliser.

For most people, the 19 presets that have been created will do a grand job of satisfying your eardrums. Using the drop-down box you can choose from bass boost, vocal boost, treble boost, dance electronic, and a whole range of others.

Before you actually start playing with these settings, we’d recommend you load up Nokia Music and find a song to play so you can hear the difference as you change the equaliser settings.

When you select one of these presets you’ll see the equaliser levels rise in some places, and dip in others.

However, for those aural-aficionados, you can go off-road and create your own custom levels. Just slide the bars up and down across the range, from low to medium to high to find that unique sound that’s more suited to your listening needs.

There’s another part to the Audio app, and that’s the enhancements feature – swipe left or right to find this. Here’s where you can switch on the Dolby Headphone and the audio levelling functions.

With Dolby Headphones switched on you’ll get a more realistic, natural sound, as if you were listing you your favourite band in the flesh. The audio levelling option ensures that the level of volume from your songs or videos remains constant and doesn’t increase massively from one track to another.

Have you use Nokia Audio yet? Have you gone for the presets, or have you created your own custom levels? Let us know, below.

Podobno w tym tygodniu odbyła się super tajemnicza konferencja konkurencji naszego WiMPa. Była tak tajna, że nie wiem czy aby na pewno się odbyła Konkurencję oczywiście serdecznie witamy, bo te usługi są moim zdaniem genialne bez względu na to jak nazywa się aplikacja. Sytuacja ta zmotywowała mnie do działania  Obiecywałem, obiecywałem i wreszcie jest! [...]

Podobno w tym tygodniu odbyła się super tajemnicza konferencja konkurencji naszego WiMPa. Była tak tajna, że nie wiem czy aby na pewno się odbyła Konkurencję oczywiście serdecznie witamy, bo te usługi są moim zdaniem genialne bez względu na to jak nazywa się aplikacja. Sytuacja ta zmotywowała mnie do działania  Obiecywałem, obiecywałem i wreszcie jest! [...]

Wielu z Was pytało – wreszcie są, najnowsze iPady w ofercie Play. Pamiętajcie proszę, że są to urządzenia na życzenie, co oznacza, że można kupić je TYLKO w sklepie internetowym Play. Apple iPad 4 4G 16GB Apple iPad Mini 3G 16GB   Szczegóły w cennniku.

Wielu z Was pytało – wreszcie są, najnowsze iPady w ofercie Play. Pamiętajcie proszę, że są to urządzenia na życzenie, co oznacza, że można kupić je TYLKO w sklepie internetowym Play. Apple iPad 4 4G 16GB Apple iPad Mini 3G 16GB   Szczegóły w cennniku.

After receiving great feedback from media, bloggers and booth-goers at CES on Xperia Z’s design, we sat down recently with Sony designers, Tom Waldner and David de Léon. They shared insight into the creative direction and inspiration behind the hardware and User Interface design of our Xperia Z smartphone…

 Tom Waldner – Head of Creative Product Design – Sony Mobile

“With Xperia Z, our goal was to create a smartphone that has a unique design expression, whilst at the same time is easy to understand. In other words, a balance of design that is beautiful and logical and  appeals to your emotions and reason. We use smartphones in all areas of our life and they are becoming deeply integrated into our behavior and society. Xperia Z is the first of our products to have the new theme we are calling “OmniBalance design”. Omni means “all” or “everywhere” – it represents the omnipresence and the multitude of smartphone uses.  This principle of OmniBalance is embodied in the design execution – a minimalistic form where only the essentials remain, with balance and symmetry throughout. It is essentially a plate of glass that has the edges and corners softened and strengthened in an encasing frame.

We focused on emphasizing the display experience; the aim is to avoid detracting from what you are really interested in – your photos, videos, movies, games on the amazing display. The idea is that Xperia Z, while standing out as a beautiful product, is comfortable to use in all situations, blends into the overall experience, and emphasizes the vibrancy of whatever might be on the screen. We want you to notice the design, but it’s when you don’t that you really appreciate it…

We also know that details matter. So, we precisely crafted each part of Xperia Z with highest-spec materials – for example, durable tempered glass for the front and the back, and aluminum keys allowed for precise detailing. The screen glass is glued directly to the body to eliminate a layer of air, bringing the display closer to the lens for added touch sensitivity, improved image and smaller size.”

David de Léon – Interaction Director – Sony Mobile 

“In our user interface design we stick to the same core values that govern our product design. Our aim is to provide users with a simple and direct way to do the most important things. This requires sensitivity on the part of our designers to what people want to do, their thought processes, and to the contexts in which our devices are used. Observing people use our devices plays a big part in getting the design right.

Smartphones are incredibly powerful and it is challenging to keep them simple without compromising on that power – on all those things that people want to do with them. Our approach is to think of the interface as layered. At the top, if you will, we present users with a clear picture of what an application is, and what it can do, all the time focusing on the most frequent and important activities. We then carefully layer in more advanced functionality, taking care to not get in the way of the basics.

Is this having our cake and eating it? We hope so!

Our graphic style follows the same general principle: the interface is elegant and restrained at first glance, but there is great attention to detail, and meticulous craftsmanship, that you discover over time. This ensures that the design stays fresh.

In short, that we try to hit the values of simplicity, usefulness, elegance, craftsmanship and power.”

Thanks to Tom and David for their time. To learn more about our design story, check out the video above!

While Creative Studio isn’t a brand new app – it’s been around for about a year – it has seen several updates and undergone a facelift for the latest Nokia Lumia smartphones, such as the Nokia Lumia 920, Lumia 820 and Lumia 620. With a nice selection of photo-filters, it’s the perfect companion for those wanting to jazz up their photos.

Creative Studio is one of Nokia’s exclusive apps, only available on Nokia Lumia smartphones from the Windows Phone Store.

Once installed, you can find the app in the application list, which you can then pin to your Start screen, if you’d prefer fast and easy access.

Nokia Lumia 620

Our newest Windows Phone 8 smartphone.

The family is growing.

When you launch the app, you’ll discover that the welcome screen is populated with the most recent photos you’ve taken – about a dozen, or so.

If you want to add a filter to one of those, go ahead and select one. Alternatively, you can find more by selecting the photos text at the bottom.

This is where you can look through all your different albums, whether that is from the Camera Roll, your SkyDrive photos, or any of the Facebook albums – providing you’ve setup Facebook.

Once you’ve chosen the ideal candidate to be ‘filtered’, you’ll find a simple interface waiting for you to apply the layer.

Starting from the original image, swiping the image up or down will scroll through several effects. These include:

• Silver
• Ivory
• Seashell
• Quartz
• Original
• Jade
• Aquamarine
• Amber
• Opal

Once a filter has been added, you can make further edits in the ‘adjust’ mode, such as changing the brightness, clarity, vibrance, and colour balance. When you swipe the screen to the left, you will get access to the typical edits, such as crop + rotate and red eye removal. And it is worth noting that you can always choose to edit the picture as it is by first selecting the Original filter.

If you want, you can just press save here and call it a day. However, if you want to share the photo, you can. Creative Studio supports sharing via SMS, email, OneNote, WhatsApp and the usual social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Here are a couple of examples of Creative Studio at work, taken from the Nokia Lumia 920 photo challenge over at our Finnish blog, Nokia Ääni – courtesy of Anthony Ubaud.

Creative Studio is available for all Nokia Lumia smartphones*, and can be downloaded from Windows Phone Store for free.

What do you think of Creative Studio? Have you use it to spruce up some of your photos? Use the comments section below, to let us know.

*This version of Creative Studio only works on Nokia Lumia smartphones with Windows Phone 8. Previous versions of Windows Phone can find Creative Studio, here.

As if being able to charge up your smartphone without plugging it in was not brilliant enough, Nokia is taking the experience one step further. 

What if your lovely Nokia Lumia 920 or Lumia 820 was showing you useful information while it was being wirelessly charged?

This is what the Weather & Calendar feature of the new Nokia Accessory application will do.

Weather & Calendar

When you are charging your Lumia 920 or Lumia 820 on the Nokia DT-910 wireless charging stand, you can tap NFC base of the charging stand to activate the Weather & Calendar screensaver.

This will show you the clock, your upcoming calendar appointment for today and tomorrow and the local weather provided you have a data connection and have enabled location services.

Naturally, it will also show you the charging level of your phone’s battery. In fact, an initial animation of the battery icon will be the first thing you see before it fades away to reveal the screensaver.

When you remove the smartphone from the stand, you’ll be shown the animation again and the current charge level.

Weather & Calendar is a clever feature that really takes advantage of the wireless charging stand’s gorgeous design. The stand is angled and shows your phone’s display prominently anyway so why just have a blank screen while it is being charged?

This way you can easily glance at useful information on your phone while you are working at your desk or reading a newspaper while the Lumia boosts its power reserves.

If you charge your phone in the bedroom at night it is also simple to dim the screen to a comfortable level by flicking the screen up or down. 

Customisation and options

When the screensaver is on, touch anywhere on the screen to bring up the menu icon to edit the settings of the Nokia Accessory application.

The first thing you can change is the most radical – you can change the NFC tap to open a completely different application that you’ve downloaded from the Windows Phone Store!

For example, in the interests of fairness, there are plenty of other screensaver apps available! 

In addition to changing the application that is opened by the tap, you can choose to open a different app in each of the wireless charging stands you may have.

Each wireless charging stand has each its own unique NFC tag, so you could have a stand in your bedroom that will tap to open the Weather & Calendar screensaver, while the stand at your desk can tap to open an app to let you monitor your stock prices or the latest football results!

Other customisation options include the ability to switch between your current weather location or entering it manually and having the temperature shown in Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Availability

The Weather & Calendar screensaver app is available through the latest Accessories update for Nokia Lumia 820 and Nokia Lumia 920 (apart from those devices on Verizon). You need a Nokia DT-910 wireless charging stand to use it though!

Handsets bought in 2013 will have Weather & Calendar on the Nokia Accessory app enabled straight out of the box.

Our first Nokia Lumia Challenge has just come to an end! But before we get into who’s won a Nokia Purity headset, let’s take a look at some of the cracking entries we’ve had.

Pisák

Some awesome cyan chalk artwork here by Pisák, turning his Lumia into an angel!

Stephen

It looks like this was taken beside a swimming pool. Stephen’s Lumia blends in perfectly, a brilliant colour match.

JP

Here’s JP ‘on top of the world’ with his Cyan Lumia, in the French Alps. A killer image!

Fergal

I  understand this image took Fergal a long time to achieve, and definitely appreciate the white Lumia matching the natural white cliffs in the UK. Excellent colour match!

And to our winners…

Daniel

Our first winner, Daniel, encapsulates so much in his vibrant colour match photo. The briskness of a sunny day on a ski slope, the colourful attire that you’ll encounter and fun you’ll be having to boot. We love it. Congratulations Daniel.

Harry

Finally, our last winner is one we featured halfway through the challenge. Out of all the entries, this one just works, it gives great insight into Harry’s passion for music. The white Lumia sat inside the guitar strings is a great match too. Congratulations, we love it!

Thanks for your participation everybody, it’s been awesome looking at your pictures every week! Winners, please drop me an email and we’ll arrange your prizes.

If you didn’t win this time stay tuned, there will be another challenge starting next week!