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Click here to view the video on YouTube.

One of the first things you do when you buy a new phone is go through the settings and find the ring tone that suits you. Those ring tones are carefully crafted and fine-tuned to sound just perfect, and that’s why the Sound Design team at Nokia chose the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra to play the music when creating 25 amazing classical ring tones.

When you think of design, you probably imagine what something looks like. However, there’s more to design than meets the eye. Sound design is just as important as hardware or software design and when it comes to mobile phones, it’s all about being able to design a whole package.

Based on a preference study a few years ago on what kind of music or genre people would like to have as a ring tone, classical music ring tones were the second most popular.

“The 25 original pieces, called ‘miniatures’ were composed by five Nokia Design in-house sound designers. We started exploring the idea through contemporary classical and film music, However, the final result was original pieces that are distinctively ring tones: they are short, and they all have a functional sounds element,” explains Aleksi Eeben from the Sound Design team at Nokia, who was the creative lead for the project.

With 55 members in the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra, lead by David Hernando Rico, and a recording team at the ready, the finished original audio masterpieces resemble something you might expect to hear in a video game or in a movie.

Some of these beautiful ring tones can be found already preinstalled on the new Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820.  The plans for the rest of the tones is that they’ll be available in certain upcoming device models over the coming few months, and onwards into the new year.

Although these tones were created internally within Nokia Sound Design, the team worked with Epic Sound who worked on some of the composing and arranging. Asbjoern Andersen, from Epic Sound, says:

“Nokia has one of the most recognizable brand sounds in the world and has done lots of pioneering work to innovate and evolve sound on mobile phones. And I think bringing in a living, breathing orchestra really takes this to the next level.”

When it comes to ring tones, they’re usually created in a studio using a synthesiser to produce a wide variety of sounds. While this does produce great results, Nokia wanted to bring the audio experience to life:

“There’s a lot of thought, effort and new ideas put into the devices – not only in terms of the hardware, but also in the overall user experience and design of the products,”

Explains Asbjoern.

“The Nokia mobile sounds are heard around a billion times a day, so a lot of work is put into ensuring that they would stand repeated listening in a lot of different environments and to give the products a unique, organic sound you don’t normally hear on mobile devices.”

When it comes to audio, hearing really is believing. Pop in some headphones and press play on the embedded ring tones below to experience some of them for yourself.

Shimmering

Archipelago

Mountain Peaks

Earl’s Torch

Dewdrop

Bird Box

Afternoon

You’ll be able to use some of these ring tones for yourself when you purchase the new Nokia Lumia 920 or Nokia Lumia 820 or over the coming months and year when they become available.

What do you think of the tones? Let us know, in the comments below.

image credit (homepage carousel): Garromeister

Groupon is a staple for deal seekers. Through group buys, consumers can score deals on travel, goods, meals and just about any service around them. With the mobile app on your Nokia Lumia, you can buy and use your Groupons while on the go. 

With the newest version of Groupon’s Windows Phone 8 app, we’re taking the deal experience to a whole new level. Initially available in the US for Nokia Lumia users, you can literally see augmented reality Groupons through your camera lenses. Simply point your phone in any direction and see those virtual Groupons pop right before your eyes.

One of the cool features of Windows Phone 8 – now available on the Nokia Lumia 820, Lumia 920, Lumia 810 and Lumia 822 – is Microsoft Wallet. With Wallet, you now have instant access to your purchased Groupon deals.

Have you purchased a Groupon and not sure when it expired? No worries. With notification alerts on your live tile, you will always know when deals are going bye bye – and they’ll be visible within the Wallet section as well.  You can also receive a push notification on expired deals – a feature you’ll only find on Windows Phone.

If you want to stay in the know – be sure to pin the Groupon live tile to your home screen so you can view details based on your location. Also, if you’re the social butterfly, you can easily share your Groupons on Twitter and Facebook, directly from the app. 

As you can see, the Groupon app for Windows Phone brings something special for Nokia Lumia users. I most appreciate the ability to see the Groupons around me, navigate to those locations with Nokia Maps, and view through the camera lenses in real time those must-have Groupons! Also, reminders on when my Groupons will expire are a huge bonus so that I can be sure to pocket my savings by actually using them.

Tell us what your favorite aspect of the new Groupon app is.

Search for the Nokia Lumia 920 online and you get over a 100 million results. With so much information out there about the world’s most innovative smartphone, you’d think there’s nothing else to learn. Well, we’ve spoken to Smart Devices tech guru, Timo Joutsenvirta, and he’s helped us unearthed ten cool facts and features, you still probably don’t know about.

1. Zirkonium camera deco and side buttons

Nokia devices have always been built to last, so maybe it comes as no surprise to discover the camera decoration and side buttons are made from an incredibly hard substance called zirkonium. Both scratch and dirt resistant, it ensures your Nokia Lumia 920 looks great for even longer. 

2. Perfectly synchronized floating lens tech

You’ve probably heard that the OIS in Lumia 920 uses floating lens technology. However, whereas typical DSLR stabilization solutions have only one moving lens, within the Lumia 920 the entire optical assembly works in perfect synchronization with the camera movements. Which means less camera shake than ever before.

3. NFC integrated into wireless charging stand

If you’re using the Lumia 920’s wireless charging stand, you can use your favourite applications while it’s powering up. Simply tap your phone with the NFC logo in the wireless charging stand and the application will start. How’s that for convenience?

4. Higher-powered flash

The Lumia 920, doesn’t just have a Dual-LED flash, it has a next generation high-power Dual-LED flash. This give you a significantly more powerful flash of light for those darker environments and ensures you can take fantastic pictures even further away from your subject.

 5. Personal music equalizer

To give you the best possible music and video experience, the Lumia 920 has a sound equalizer. There are eighteen presets available, but you can also create your very own settings.

6. Automatic photo upload

We all know how annoying it is to lose a great photo. Happily, with the Lumia 920, you can automatically uploads all your photos to your SkyDrive. This not only immediately saves them, but means you can show them on any web enabled tablet, laptop or PC. What’s more, you can use WiFi for uploading full resolution photos.

7. Better Facebook personalization

When it comes to personalization, the Lumia 920 rocks. If you download the Facebook app, for example, it gives you the option to select a random picture from your Facebook albums and have it set as your lock screen picture. You’ll be presented with a random new memory day after day.

8. Your own Lumia 920 rooms

The Lumia 920 also takes social to a new level by allowing you to create a room  where you can share calendars, photos and notes your friends or family. On top of this, you can also have private group chat within the group.

9. Bluetooth voice commands

When you have your Lumia 920 connected to your Bluetooth headset or to your car audio system, you have the option to read or ignore your text messages using voice commands. Just command read to have the Lumia 920 read the incoming SMS or say ignore to save the message for later.

10. You can photograph the web

The Lumia 920 also makes it easier to save info from the web, by giving you the option to take screenshots. Simultaneously press the power key and Windows key and your Lumia will take a screenshot of your display and save it in the gallery.

If you’re anything like us, you’ll probably discover a cool new feature on your Nokia Lumia 920 every single day. If so, we’d love to hear which unexpected delight got you smiling the widest.

Image credit: Onezilla

What are two of the most-checked items on your Lumia after your email (…and maybe Twitter..and Facebook)? That’s right, the weather and news apps. We all want to know what’s happening in the world, and whether to pack an umbrella when we get there. This week’s app selection looks at a couple of the best in each area:

Weather Channel

Cost: Free in the Marketplace , and as Weather in the Nokia Collection
Availability: Everywhere
In a nutshell: It’s raining, it’s pouring

As seen in the photo above from Daniel Rubino’s review of the app at wpcentral, the app looks nice and clear, even if the skies around you aren’t. He confirms that a ‘re-design…greatly enhances the experience’ for the user. He describes some of the features – including being able to see the weather alerts where your friends are, and a personalised ‘amazing day option’ before summarising that he really likes the app and it has had

‘new life breathed into [it] by Nokia’

Do you use this app? What do you think of it?

Accuweather

Cost: Free in the Marketplace
Availability: Everywhere
In a nutshell: The weather, on a Live Tile

This is my personal weather app of choice and it sits on my homescreen, constantly reminding me that it’s raining. Of course, I could just look out of the window, but that won’t tell me whether it is going to rain in three days, or how much, or whether it will be sunny when I visit New York. I’ll let Izzi walk you through it:

And now, the news…

CNN

Cost: Free in the Marketplace (also available en Español)
Availability: Everywhere
In a nutshell: World news, now

The guys at MobileTechWorldTV have taken a look at the CNN app:

The ‘really smooth experience’ is walked through, including the setting (shake to update was news to me!) and the iReporter options.

Is this the source of your news? Or do you prefer another channel, maybe like…

BBC News Mobile

Cost: Free in the Marketplace
Availability: Everywhere
In a nutshell: More news, maybe with an English slant

A dive into the vaults now, to take a look at one of the very first Lumiappaday reviews from Jay’s most excellent series. For more on the app…over to Jay at the news desk:

So, which news app delivers the latest stories to your Lumia? Which weather app lets you know what’s coming? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter and we might take a look at them in a future post.

One of the services we constantly update, basically on a weekly basis, is maps.nokia.com. What started as a web companion for your mobile experience has grown in features so much that you can now use it to plan your travels. By now, for instance, you should be familiar with our city pages from which you can explore and get the feeling for a city before even going there.

Today, I would like to walk you through some of the new features, which have been further developed during the last few weeks.

Groupon

We have been providing the possibility to discover Groupon Now! deals around you with Nokia Maps for Nokia Lumiasince last August. Now we are extending this option to maps.nokia.com. Groupon Now! on maps.nokia.com is a great way to get nearby deals on demand. You can buy them and use them right away for instant gratification. We think that this is a perfect way to try new places or find great offers around you, in your home city or when traveling. On maps.nokia.com you will see Groupon Now! deals at the bottom of your browser window when exploring the map on street zoom level.

Because Groupon Now! deals are geographically limited, this feature is currently only available in the US.

Weather

I personally love to check out weather forecast. Of course I need to know how cold Berlin is going to be so that I know to dress up correctly. But I also want to know what the weather is like where my family or friends live. With maps.nokia.com it’s easier than ever to see at a glance the weather conditions around the world, from cities to countries.

Quickly find recent routes

If you use directions a lot, you may find yourself looking for that route you calculated recently. Now you can see the last three routes that you calculated in the Directions panel. But don’t forget that you can save the routes you use most often to favourites. Just click the Favourites “star” on the route bubble or in the left-hand panel to save the route to your favourites. You can then access it at any time on maps.nokia.com.

Bookmark traffic information

On maps.nokia.com you can see the live traffic situation in several cities around the globe. Recently we have also been displaying exact information about congestions and road works. If you are a regular commuter however, you probably want to access this information as fast as possible on your browser. This is why you can now bookmark the traffic page for your city, making it easier than ever to get straight to the information that’s important for you, right now. Try it right now for Berlin, Florence and more.

Maps Labs

We are listening carefully to your feedback and your feature requests and to give you even better chance to have your say we are now introducing the Nokia Maps Labs. It’s a collection of features we would like you to test before we are going to make them available for everyone or decide that they need to be refined further. We like to think that with maps.nokia.com you can be a map scientist. The first three Nokia Maps Labs features are:

1. “Zoom-in-the-box” that allows you to draw a box on the map and zoom in on the area inside it.
2. “Mouse Geo-locator” that gives your exact geographical coordinates when moving the mouse over the map.
3. You can also have some fun with “Make an Earth sandwich”, an amusing twist to the search for antipodes.

To activate Nokia Maps Labs, go to Preferences (menu on top right), select which features you want to use and save your changes. You can activate/deactivate the features anytime in the Features dropdown menu.

Which features are you going to use? What do you think about them?

image credit: piermario

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

One of the first things you do when you buy a new phone is go through the settings and find the ring tone that suits you. Those ring tones are carefully crafted and fine-tuned to sound just perfect, and that’s why the Sound Design team at Nokia chose the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra to play the music when creating 25 amazing classical ring tones.

When you think of design, you probably imagine what something looks like. However, there’s more to design than meets the eye. Sound design is just as important as hardware or software design and when it comes to mobile phones, it’s all about being able to design a whole package.

Based on a preference study a few years ago on what kind of music or genre people would like to have as a ring tone, classical music ring tones were the second most popular.

“The 25 original pieces, called ‘miniatures’ were composed by five Nokia Design in-house sound designers. We started exploring the idea through contemporary classical and film music, However, the final result was original pieces that are distinctively ring tones: they are short, and they all have a functional sounds element,” explains Aleksi Eeben from the Sound Design team at Nokia, who was the creative lead for the project.

With 55 members in the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra, lead by David Hernando Rico, and a recording team at the ready, the finished original audio masterpieces resemble something you might expect to hear in a video game or in a movie.

Some of these beautiful ring tones can be found already preinstalled on the new Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820.  The plans for the rest of the tones is that they’ll be available in certain upcoming device models over the coming few months, and onwards into the new year.

Although these tones were created internally within Nokia Sound Design, the team worked with Epic Sound who worked on some of the composing and arranging. Asbjoern Andersen, from Epic Sound, says:

“Nokia has one of the most recognizable brand sounds in the world and has done lots of pioneering work to innovate and evolve sound on mobile phones. And I think bringing in a living, breathing orchestra really takes this to the next level.”

When it comes to ring tones, they’re usually created in a studio using a synthesiser to produce a wide variety of sounds. While this does produce great results, Nokia wanted to bring the audio experience to life:

“There’s a lot of thought, effort and new ideas put into the devices – not only in terms of the hardware, but also in the overall user experience and design of the products,”

Explains Asbjoern.

“The Nokia mobile sounds are heard around a billion times a day, so a lot of work is put into ensuring that they would stand repeated listening in a lot of different environments and to give the products a unique, organic sound you don’t normally hear on mobile devices.”

When it comes to audio, hearing really is believing. Pop in some headphones and press play on the embedded ring tones below to experience some of them for yourself.

Shimmering

Archipelago

Mountain Peaks

Earl’s Torch

Dewdrop

Bird Box

Afternoon

You’ll be able to use some of these ring tones for yourself when you purchase the new Nokia Lumia 920 or Nokia Lumia 820 or over the coming months and year when they become available.

What do you think of the tones? Let us know, in the comments below.

image credit (homepage carousel): Garromeister

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Część z Was zauważyła już pewnie, że do oferty wprowadziliśmy: HTC Desire X   Bardzo dobry stosunek jakości do ceny. Mikołaj pozwolił nam się pobawić trochę tą zabawką i wzięliśmy ją na testy. Tym razem porównaliśmy ją przy okazji z modelami ONE X i DESIRE C.  Zobaczcie nasz video test. Cennik Pamiętajcie kochani, że każdy [...]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to keep you updated on the continuation of our Stand out from the crowd campaign… you may remember us launching it last year.

Stand Out was initially created for the independent development community working with Xperia PLAY; offering promotion and marketing support in exchange for game optimization leveraging the ultimate gaming smartphone’s unique gamepad.

We recently evolved the initiative with Xperia | exclusive  - where we work with our favourite indie developers to provide you with optimized and exclusive Android gaming content across all Sony Xperia devices.

We’re kicking-off with three killer, optimized games -

Megacity HD

Original and (admittedly) addictive, MegaCity HD is Tetris meets Sim City – easy to learn, but difficult to master!

Gumman Clive

Retro platformer set in the wild-west. The aim is to jump and shoot your way across 16 rootin’- tootin levels – easy, right?

Mini Motor Racing

Size doesn’t matter after all… the cars may be small, but the fun is unrelenting! Simply put, Mini Motor Racing is remote-controlled cars on… nitro.

To access these games, use your Sony Select/recommender and look for the Xperia | exclusive icon. Or just visit here.

With more great content on the way, keep your eyes on the blog as we’ll be keeping you updated on more of our upcoming work with the developer community.

Ant.